


the story of tonight

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Alternate Universe, F/M, Mission Fic, Mr. and Mrs. Smith - Freeform, The time when Natasha made a different call, Undercover as Married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 15:38:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6616096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Natasha and I are…”</p><p>“Spies?” Laura interrupts as Clint brings her the mug. He clears his throat.</p><p>“Married.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, god. So the story is that this thing originally started as my 2015 NaNoWriMo (hence the length). I got about 10K into it before I lost steam and then it got semi-abandoned to due to writer's block and TTCRD, but in the aftermath of needing OT3 feelings, I decided to finally finish it. This also began as a Mr. and Mrs. Smith OT3 AU/fusion but it somewhere along the line, it basically ended up evolving into an OT3 AU mission fic that is only faintly similar to the themes of the film. Either way, I regret nothing.
> 
> Thanks to Shelly for sitting through most of this during NaNo writing dates and gecko for always being there for my whining.

**PART ONE**

“Like I said, it’s not a _bad_ marriage.”

The moment the words leave his mouth, he wishes he had thought better of them. Natasha is sitting across from him, her silent and stony stare turning downright cold, the kind of cold Clint knows could send even the most revered criminal scrambling for the hills.

“Mrs. Barton, do you agree with your husband?”

Natasha quirks one eyebrow and then spreads two perfectly manicured nails on the table. “My _husband_ has a very strange idea of what the term ‘bad marriage’ means. As far as I’m concerned, we’re perfectly happy.” She smiles; it’s a smile that Clint knows anyone else would read as genuine, but to him, it reads as positively dangerous.

“Being perfectly happy is only one aspect of a relationship, you know. Are you aware that Mr. Barton claims your... _intimacy_ has taken a bit of a break lately?”

“Well, he’s not wrong,” Natasha responds immediately. “I can’t remember the last time we had sex.”

“And do you think that’s because of your marriage troubles?”

Clint opens his mouth and then closes it after seeing Natasha’s face. When she doesn’t respond after too many long beats of silence, he decides to take the plunge.

“I think it’s because sometimes, I just miss Bogota.”

 

 

_Bogota, as they tell the story, was the shitshow that was never meant to be._

_He had arrived at the airport with an already bad feeling about the whole thing, had chalked it up to a terrible turbulent flight and even more terrible coffee that not even alcohol had helped the taste of, all of which have left him cranky and frustrated and practically pushing his passport through the customs window. When the man behind the counter gives him a look after inquiring “business or pleasure?” Clint glares._

_“You wanna see my lease?” Clint asks sarcastically, only half aware that he probably shouldn’t piss off border guards, much less people working somewhere important enough that they could probably throw him back out of the country if they felt like it and then, well, this whole thing would be a bust and his bosses would have his ass on a silver platter. The guard heaves out a sigh and stamps his passport._

_“Welcome to Bogota, Mr. Barton.”_

_He smiles his thanks and then adjusts his duffle bag over his shoulder as he maneuvers through the rest of security and out of the airport. There’s a nondescript black car waiting for “Mr. Smith,” the one that he knows will take him to his hotel, where he figures he can get a few hours of real sleep before he has to figure out what the hell he’s doing here. He had taken the mission on a whim, mostly because it seemed interesting (following international terrorists usually are, he’s learned) but also because it was an easy way for him to get off the desk duty he’d been mandated to for the past month, thanks to a broken arm._

_Hotel Estelar La Fontana is on the fancier side of establishments Clint has stayed in while visiting overseas: a large, sprawling building with modest architecture that looks like it’s fallen straight out of a storybook. A stone fountain holds court in the front with something that looks like a clock tower attached, and all Clint finds himself thinking as the car drops him off is how good a shower and possibly a free plush robe is going to feel on his aching skin. He checks in without issue and then takes the elevator up to his room, collapsing onto the bed and closing his eyes without bothering to get changed._

_Bogota. It wasn’t margaritas on the beach in Mexico, or a villa in Italy. But Clint’s alright with that, for now._

 

 

“ _I think it’s because sometimes, I just miss Bogota_?” Natasha walks through the door of the house an hour later and throws her coat on the floor, not waiting for a response before she continues. “ _Really_?”

“What?” Clint feels genuinely confused and Natasha rolls her eyes.

“I think it’s because sometimes, I just miss Bogota,” she repeats under her breath. “Unbelievable.”

Clint snorts. “Fine. Were _you_ going to be the one to get all mushy and tell him about how we met?”

“Probably not,” Natasha says with a leering grin, removing a beer from the fridge. “By the way, your turn to order FreshDirect this week. We’re almost out of milk.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Clint responds with an eye roll. “For your information, I was going to do it before I went to bed.”

“Sure you were,” Natasha says conversationally, downing half of her beer before coming up for air. “Anyway, bringing up Bogota made no sense in that context. We didn’t sleep together there.”

“Not the first time,” Clint mutters, slumping into a chair and rubbing his hands across his face. “What assignments do you have this week?”

Natasha turns around and looks surprised at the change in subject matter. S _he had really been going for a fight_ , Clint realizes with a start and he suddenly feels a little sad he hadn’t pushed her further. Fights with Natasha almost always ended up in an angry outpouring of sex and even though it didn’t happen often anymore, it was still worth it when it occurred.

“Latvia for the week and then over to Prague,” she says, putting her beer on the table. “You?”

“Genosha and Paris. Super secret international terrorist things, or so I’ve been told. My speciality.”

“One could say that,” Natasha mutters, but she’s smiling. “I should thank you.”

“Hey, thank the people that were trying to kill you,” Clint says, sharing her smile. “If I hadn’t gotten shot and you hadn’t taken me off the grid, I’d probably still be drinking beer in a fancy bar in Colombia. Or, you know, I could be in a jail cell rotting away with my bow and arrow.”

“Or both,” Natasha remarks with a smirk. “Though, considering how well I know you, the jail option is probably more likely.” She slides into his lap, running her hands through his hair and Clint pulls back, furrowing his brow.

“What is this?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Natasha leans down and licks a spot on his neck, her lips turning up. “Maybe I want a chance to prove that damn counselor wrong about us.”

Clint groans as she works her way down his skin, making soft, guttural noises in his throat while she kisses him.

“Do you remember when we first met?” He asks the question as she finds his mouth and Natasha kisses him deeply before she pulls away.

“Yes,” she says breathlessly. “You told me I looked like the most beautiful girl in the world.”

“Correction,” Clint mumbles, his mouth full of hers. “I said you looked like the sun.”

Natasha shrugs, hooking her fingers into his jeans. “Cheesy metaphor still works, right?” She thrusts forward, tipping the chair back dangerously, and Clint closes his eyes.

“I guess.” He pushes back, falling into her rhythm, and the beer bottle that’s been sitting on the table falls to the floor, shattering glass in all directions.

 

 

_The suit has seen better days._

_Clint’s a little annoyed, to be honest. He had packed light, but he had also packed_ smartly _, and smartly did not include the suit he needed to go undercover in being wrinkled. He sighs, tugging at the sleeves, dragging a comb through his hair as he stares at his reflection, one hand fingering the crumpled piece of paper in his pocket. He’s still bone-tired, but after downing some decent coffee and a few shots of vodka, he’s found himself a little more alert -- at least, alert enough to trust himself to not get killed on the job and alert enough to be able to shoot accurately, should it come to that. He glances towards the bed and then walks over, picking up the recently loaded gun and shoving it underneath his jacket after double checking for the safety; a last resort since tonight was supposed to be about gathering intel but for as decent as Clint knows he is when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, he’s learned it never hurts to be armed._

_He gives the room one more sweep and then heads out, flicking off the light before he makes his way down the hall to the elevator. The hotel bar is where he’s supposed to meet his contact and pass on the details that will get him information about who he’s supposed to be looking for tonight. And really, all Clint cares about is that it’s going to afford him the opportunity to continue to drink on his someone else’s dime, which means he’s not going to complain about the specifics._

_He slides onto a stool, orders a gin and tonic and settles in, glancing up and doing a double take when he notices the girl sitting across from him at the other end of the bar. He’s been to Colombia before, moreover, he knows nice hotels like this generally don’t attract women who_ aren’t _well put together. But she’s_ so _well put together that he finds himself staring intently. Her amber hair is pulled half up in a bun, wavy curls stretching down the side of her neck like a trail of uncontrollable flames, and her simple black dress plunges deep along her chest, revealing what Clint can tell is, even from a distance, decently nice cleavage. More than that, she’s fending off the stares of men who seem to all be having the same idea Clint has had while casually sipping something that looks like water, though Clint’s smart enough to guess that it’s probably either straight vodka or some other strong but unassuming concoction._

_He tears his gaze away once he realizes how long he’s been staring and also once she turns her gaze, pinning him with green, intense eyes. Clint shifts uncomfortably, throwing back the rest of his drink, wincing as it burns its way down his throat._

_That’s when the shot comes._

_His brain snaps into awareness at the first loud crack and he reaches for his gun as hotel guests start to scream, ducking under the bar table when more gunshots arrive from seemingly out of nowhere. He presses himself against the underhang of the counter, counting to five in his head before he grabs the gun from his back pocket and clicks off the safety, firing in the direction of the first shot._

_He hears a yell, indicating the guy he’s been aiming for has gone down, but before he can move and shoot again a searing pain rips through his leg, sending him back to the floor. He bites his lip to keep from yelling, tearing through already chapped skin, and feels wetness dribbling down his chin._

_“Shit,” he mutters, spitting out blood as his eyes register the dark splotch that’s starting to saturate his pants. He attempts to pull himself up so he can at least get out of the line of fire when a slim jewelry-clad hand shoots out suddenly, clutching his wrist and dragging him behind an overturned table._

_“What the fuck!” He yells out half in agony and half in surprise, his vision blurring with pain and, he realizes, probably the impact of blood loss. When he blinks himself back into consciousness, he’s shocked to see the girl from across the bar shoving a handful of cloth napkins onto his skin._

_“Hold still,” she says sharply, putting her hand on his leg. “The more you move, the faster you’ll bleed out.”_

_“Ugh, fuck that,” he mutters, breathing heavily. “Just slap a bandage on it and drag me into a room or something.”_

_“It’s not that simple,” says the girl, and she looks suddenly frustrated. “The bullet made a clean exit but you need stitches and possibly antibiotics. It’s a pretty bad hit.” She pauses. “I can help you, but I’d need to find someplace to patch you up where I’m not getting shot at.”_

_“Where you’re --” He stops and groans as she presses down harder on his wound. “_ You’re _the reason I got shot? Seriously?”_

_The girl doesn’t answer, instead grabbing a pair of small scissors from somewhere Clint can’t be bothered to figure out, cutting away at his suit and tying the strips of fabric over his injury._

_“Shut the hell up. Do you want to live, or not?”_

_“Depends,” he pants, trying to concentrate on the way her hair is falling over her face, mingling with the blood he knows is pouring out of his wound. “Who the hell_ are _you?”_

_“The girl they apparently sent people to kill.” She pauses. “My name is Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.”_

_“Natasha.” He manages a grin, smiling through what he knows is blood stained teeth. “I’m Clint Barton.”_

 

 

When Clint wakes up the next morning, he finds the pillow next to his head neatly fluffed and the bedroom quiet, and after a few false starts where he collapses back onto his own pillow in tiredness, he manages to tear himself out of bed.

“Aw, Nat,” he says sarcastically as he enters the kitchen. “You’re sending me off with love.” He rubs his messed up hair when he sees the filled mug on the counter; the house is quiet and he’s not talking to anyone in particular and so he almost drops his coffee when Natasha speaks up from behind him.

“What, you think just because we haven’t had sex in awhile I don’t care about your caffeine intake?”

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, compensating for almost spilling most of his drink by slurping the burning liquid away from the top. “When’s your flight again?”

“Noon,” Natasha says, checking her watch. “They’re sending a car by to pick me up in half an hour. Hopefully the neighbors don’t get too suspicious this time. It’s like they’ve never seen anyone get picked up by a luxury vehicle before.”

“I think it’s more the frequency in which it happens,” Clint says, moving his hand to his face, where his palm rests over the beginnings of his beard. “Will you call me when you get to Latvia?”

Natasha glares. “I’ll send a pigeon,” she says, before pausing. “Of course I’ll call, Clint.”

“Thanks.” He throws her a grateful look. “I mean, I know it’s standard protocol and everything, but…”

“But what?” Natasha prompts. “You’re afraid I’m going to go over there and find some other hot guy to have an affair with?”

“Not exactly,” Clint grumbles, trying not to let her words get to him, even though he knows Natasha better than anyone and knows that she’s joking. “Just take care of yourself, okay?”

“Always do.” She grins and then walks forward to kiss him, her lips lingering on his longer than he feels might be necessary, one hand pressed gently against his cheek. “Stay safe yourself, okay?”

Clint nods, swallowing down a lump in his throat. “I will. See you in two weeks?”

Natasha smiles and nods, reaching for her bag and her coat. “See you in two weeks.”

 

 

_“Look, I wish I could say this in a nicer way right now, but try not to fucking die on me, okay?”_

_“Trying not to,” Clint mutters, though he can feel his breathing becoming more and more labored as they hobble through the bowels of the hotel. Natasha had pretty much left him on the floor while she took care of the rest of the people who had ambushed them (two more dead and one that had ran, limping away with a shoulder wound), then before anyone could realize what had happened, she had pushed through the crowds and chaos portraying a patron who had an injured husband, disappearing with him into one of the side doors of the hotel lobby. Clint had no idea how the hell Natasha knew where all the hidden tunnels were, given that_ he _didn’t even know, and he had done what he had thought was a thorough enough sweep of the building. At that point, however, he hadn’t bothered to care._

_“Where are you taking me?” Clint asks as they move through the underbelly of the establishment. Natasha grunts in response and Clint feels bad that she’s carrying most of his weight, but he doesn’t think he can do much to help right now._

_“My house. Well, not my house. A safehouse that my boss has set up for me. You’ll be able to rest there, and I can take care of your injury.”_

_“Hospitality,” Clint mutters. “A rare find in Colombia these days. Hell, a rare find anywhere.”_

_Natasha doesn’t answer, and Clint figures he should save his breath for actually moving, given that he can feel blood leaking from his wound with every step. When they finally reach the end of a long corridor, Natasha moves ahead of him, opening a door and pushing him through._

_“Thank god,” he mutters as the cold air hits him. It’s not much, but it at least kicks his senses back into gear and he gulps in a few deep breaths, allowing his vision to clear as well as his head. “Where’s the getaway car?”_

_Natasha sighs again. “Please, enough with the witty banter. It’s bad enough that you’re American.”_

_Clint furrows his brow, trying to keep his concentration. “You’re not?”_

_She slows her gait, hoisting him higher on her shoulder and throws him a look. “Do I_ sound _American?”_

_Clint stares at her. “Yes,” he answers simply. “You’re convincing, at least.”_

_Natasha shakes her head, starting to walk again. “I’m Russian. Or I was.” There’s a falter in her tone, a slight pause that he knows he might dwell on if he could think more clearly. “Get in.”_

_He’s not sure what she’s talking about until he sees a small vehicle sitting at the curb; by this point they’ve walked a good distance away from the hotel, though Clint can hear the sirens in the distance._

_“You’ve got a car?”_

_“Of course I have a car,” she replies. “How did_ you _get here?”_

_“Uh, taxi service?” Clint asks, trying to challenge her, but his head is pounding. He lets himself pass out as soon as Natasha helps him into the backseat, trusting she’ll either wake him up before he falls into a coma or drive smartly enough to not get tailed and get them killed. He wakes up an undetermined amount of time later to Natasha’s voice mingling with overwhelming pain, and suddenly realizes that he’s lying flat on his back._

_“Calm down,” Natasha says when he tries to move, panicking about the fact he can’t remember anything except getting into Natasha’s car, and then there’s a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It’s just me.”_

_“Ugh.” Clint closes his eyes and opens them again, swallowing against a dry throat. “What happened?”_

_Natasha gets up, wiping her hands against the fabric of her dress. “You passed out when we got in the car. I got us to my safehouse and stitched you up. You’ll be okay, but I wasn’t wrong -- the hit was pretty bad.”_

_“But not bad enough that you wanted to ditch me?” Clint asks weakly, and Natasha snorts._

_“Don’t press your luck.”_

 

 

Clint takes advantage of being alone in the house after Natasha leaves, not because he likes it better when she’s not around -- he actually prefers Natasha to be with him more often than not -- but because it’s quiet, and because he can finish his coffee and read the paper and it makes him feel somewhat normal, and not like they’re tiptoeing around talking about the very real awkwardness that has become their life outside of work.

Clint doesn’t regret marrying Natasha. Clint doesn’t think he could _ever_ regret marrying Natasha. And he knows the marriage part is just a piece of paper for legal purposes anyway; their relationship was more than that and always had been. It wasn’t so much that they weren’t compatible, it was that the keeping up of appearances -- to themselves, to the world -- was taking a toll, leading them to places like therapy and leading their sex toys and condoms to be hidden underneath piles of clothes, mostly forgotten.

He gulps down the rest of his coffee, glancing at the clock on the stove, deciding he should at least shower before he leaves. Clint moves to the bathroom, shedding his pajamas and then stands under the spray longer than necessary, tilting his head back so that he can let the water make a full run down his back. His spine still hurts from the fall he took last week while he was staking out a roof in Monaco and he’s pretty sure his rib is still bruised as well, but he had hand-waved Natasha’s concern of being doctored up by overcompensating with pills. He’d survived worse and he certainly didn’t need her thinking, this late in the game, that he couldn’t handle being slightly injured. He emerges from the shower to find two texts on his phone from Natasha, one that has a smiley face and a photo of an oversized Starbucks cup, and another that says, “I fucking hate when I travel commercial” with a sad emoticon shedding two tears. Clint grins to himself and picks up his phone, texting back.

_If I get first class, want me to send you a photo of my seat?_

_Fuck you, Barton._

Good old Natasha, then. They could be getting on each other’s nerves where a real relationship was concerned, but that response was as good of an “I love you” as any, and Clint suddenly feels a little better about the whole thing. He leaves the phone on the bathroom counter and throws his clothes back on, walking to the bedroom to finish packing.

 

 

_“So, are you ever gonna tell me why people were trying to kill you?”_

_They’re sitting side-by-side on the floor of Natasha’s safe house following a mundane meal of beans and canned potatoes, though Natasha had at least had the courtesy to break out a bottle of Russian standard that she had hidden in one of the cupboards from the last time she was here. She gives him a look, and he sighs._

_“Come on. You took me off the grid of your own accord, saved my life, and clearly want me around because you haven’t told me to leave yet. So either your real mission is to kill me -- in which case, good job, cause you’ve got me where you wanted me -- or you like having me around and don’t want to ditch me yet.”_

_Natasha looks at him and then down at the floor. “Well.” She swallows. “It’s definitely not because of your charm.” She half-smiles and then shakes her head, raising her eyes. “I wasn’t sent to kill you. I didn’t even know who you were until you told me your name. I_ did _think you were cute, though. I probably would have flirted with you, if we had the time.”_

_“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,” Clint grouses, but he finds himself smiling, too. “Those guys that shot at us -- friends of yours?”_

_Natasha snorts. “Not exactly.” She pauses. “I guess you could say I’m on the world’s radar in a bad way right now. I’ve been trying to stay out of the spotlight but, well...clearly that’s not happening.”_

_“Yeah, next time you wanna stay out of the spotlight, don’t show up at a fancy hotel looking like you’re the most beautiful girl in the world,” he answers without thinking, and Natasha raises an eyebrow._

_“The most beautiful girl in the world, huh?”_

_Clint finds his cheeks growing warm and he looks down at his injury. “I dunno, you look like the sun...hey, I never said I was a_ good _flirt.”_

_They fall into silence after that, Natasha grabbing for the vodka bottle and taking a long swig, before passing it over to Clint._

_“I was being tracked,” she says slowly. “I had names and aliases, which were throwing them off a little, but I think they caught wind of my trail somewhere between Hungary and Colombia.” She sighs. “That’s the thing about spy life, you know. Once you embrace it, it never goes away.”_

_“Yeah, I kind of get it.” He meets her eyes and they hold each other’s gaze for a long time, silent questions begging for silent answers, before Natasha speaks again._

_“Have you been doing your job long?”_

_“Long enough,” Clint says evasively. It’s almost a wasteful effort to be cagey after all of this, because he knows she had to have picked up on his true motives, especially if she was as cognizant as he was thanks to her own life choices. Natasha nods._

_“Were you undercover for something specific?”_

_“Terrorists,” Clint confirms, deciding to throw all caution out the window. “I was supposed to meet someone at the bar who had coordinates that would have led me to where I was supposed find the target. Except my job has been pretty much botched now.”_

_Natasha winces. “Sorry,” she offers. Clint shrugs._

_“What, you’re gonna apologize for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? It’s okay. I mean, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to tell my bosses, but right now, I’m not dead and I’m hiding out with a bottle of vodka and my wife, and that’s a pretty nice deal.”_

_“I am_ not _your wife,” Natasha says sharply, and Clint raises an eyebrow._

_“You told the guy at the hotel we were married.”_

_“Yes, to save you and get you out of there faster,” Natasha says placidly. “Do you know how many times I’ve lied and said that someone was my husband in this line of work?”_

_Clint shrugs. “Probably more than I have.” When Natasha gives him a look, he hands the bottle back. “Anyway, the point stands. I guess I’ll just hang out here while I figure out what the hell to do, or…”_

_“Or?” Natasha’s staring at him a little too curiously and Clint tries to get a read on her expression before he says the next words out loud._

_“Or, I can come with you. To wherever you’re going or running to next.”_

_Natasha laughs, spitting half-swallowed vodka onto the floor. “That’s insane,” she says as she wipes her mouth. “You don’t want to get tangled up with me.”_

_Clint frowns. “Why not? I mean, number one, you’re pretty good at what you do. Number two, you’re basically a built-in doctor and I get hurt a lot, which could be useful. Number three --”_

_“If you say that I’m your wife again, I will_ actually _shoot you,” Natasha says dryly and Clint nods._

_“Okay. Fine. Number three, my job has been kind of suffocatingly dull lately, and I’ve been thinking of going off the grid, anyway. Making some different calls.”_

_Natasha stares at him, her eyes narrowing. “So because of all that, you’d just...leave?”_

_“Yeah. Why not?”_

_“Because...because…” Clint can almost see the way her brain is struggling to put the pieces together, the way she’s trying to grapple with what she_ wants _to say and what’s probably the_ right _thing to say. Clint knows he’s being completely selfish, because this whole thing is giving him an easy out. But there’s something about Natasha that makes him feel like he can’t just_ leave _, at least, not without getting to know her a little better._

_“Because what?”_

_The quiet stretches until Clint can’t take it anymore, and he throws up a hand._

_“Because_ what _?”_

_“Because.” Natasha clears her throat, reaching for the vodka again. “You can barely walk. You could still get an infection. How do you think you’re going anywhere with that leg of yours if I don’t help you?”_

_She takes another long drink and throws him a crooked smile, and Clint grins back._

 

 

The thing is, Clint’s not really going to Genosha.

The official word was that he was being sent to New York, but his assignment also came with the caveat of being a Level Nine mission. That meant that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss it with anyone, not even Natasha -- and as much as he loved and trusted Natasha, Clint also respected his job and the rules when they mattered. Or when they mattered enough to involve his head being on a platter in some way.

“If anyone asks, you’re going to Genosha,” he had been told when he checked in for his briefing and received a thick folder. “If Natasha asks you where you’re going, you say you’re going to Genosha. Do you understand?”

Clint had nodded and then taken the assignment with little question, only pausing to research when he got home later that day, in the privacy of their study, while Natasha took a shower. “Super secret international terrorist stuff” had been a bit of a lie as well, as his real mission was apparently to track down a criminal that was highly dangerous, one that his company wanted help bringing in for questioning. Clint’s not sure why someone _else_ couldn’t do the job, but he also realizes he does have a knack for throwing caution to the wind and giving people second chances, so maybe it wasn’t all that random that they had chosen him when someone else probably would shoot to kill if it came down to it.

And so Clint packs his bags and makes sure that the house is as clean as it’s going to get, should Natasha get home early. He double checks that his ride is still showing up as planned, and then sits on the couch finishing his coffee while reading through old cases, trying to control his urge to text Natasha, even though he knows she’s in the middle of flying. In the wake of their sex life being less than active, he’s found that he’s taken more comfort in things such as banter and texts and cuddling, things that he knows Natasha still likes and enjoys. Clint hadn’t been lying when he said his marriage wasn’t terrible, because it wasn’t. There were still things he loved about Natasha, and there were still things he knew Natasha loved about him. In a way, those things made up for the fact that they weren’t rolling between the sheets every night the way they had been at the beginning of their relationship, married or not.

His phone beeps once and he sighs, grabbing it from the couch and taking one more swig of coffee before leaving his TALK TO ME, I’M A SPY mug half-empty on the table.

 

 

_“So where exactly are we going?” Clint asks when they leave the safehouse. He can walk a little better, though it’s slow going, and he’s honestly not sure whether or not he’s going to get shot at again, which doesn’t make him feel entirely confident. Natasha’s silent beside him, her face covered with a pair of oversized sunglasses and a huge hat balanced on the top of her red hair, the definition of a tourist that stuck out like a sore thumb -- and strangely enough, the fact that Natasha has put herself in the spotlight as opposed to being stealth is working for them, with hardly anyone throwing a second glance._

_“Bus station. We’ll catch something over to Lima, and then take it from there.”_

_“Am I going to have to pretend to be your husband again?” Clint asks lightly, and Natasha thins her lips._

_“Don’t make me regret going on the run with you, Barton. I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.”_

_“Sure,” Clint says easily. “But without my witty charm and good looks and skills, you’re just one half of a really good spy team.”_

_Natasha doesn’t answer that but Clint sees her mouth twitch slightly at his words and finds himself feeling satisfied. Natasha was every bit the spy he had sussed out at the bar, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hiding real emotions underneath layer upon layer of covers. And, well, Clint knew all about keeping your emotions undercover. He could read other people’s tells pretty easily, no matter how well they were hidden, and he’s been able to read Natasha’s with surprising ease._

_“Have you ever had a partner?”_

_Natasha stops at a crosswalk and shakes her head slowly. “No,” she admits. “I’ve always worked alone. I like it that way, when you only have to worry about taking responsibility for yourself.” She pauses. “You?”_

_“No,” Clint answers honestly. “Same kind of thing, especially being a free agent and all. But I also don’t think I work so well with people.”_

_“No idea why,” Natasha mutters and Clint rolls his eyes._

_“One day, I’ll come up with a good enough comeback for you.”_

_Natasha turns in the middle of walking and grins, holding her hat with one hand to keep it from blowing off her head. “One day,” she teases in a voice that makes Clint squirm, and he’s suddenly glad that she’s outfitted him with a long coat that she’d kept in her safehouse and allowed him to borrow._

_“So what happens once we get to Lima?”_

_Natasha shrugs. “We’ll figure it out. Provided no one shoots at us first. That sound like a plan to you, assassin?”_

_Clint nods. “Yeah,” he says, and even though this is the first time in his life where he knows he’s really got no plan at all, he finds himself feeling pretty good about her question. “Yeah, it does.”_

 

 

New York greets him like an open wound: uncomfortable, hot, and more intense than he remembers from previous trips. The good thing about traveling domestically means that at least there’s no passport issues or customs lines to worry about, and he shoves his own blue book further into his pocket. He had taken it just in case Natasha got home early, mostly so he could cover his tracks about being sent overseas if he was questioned.

Which also meant that he had to be careful with his texts. He’d already calculated the time difference between Lativa and Genosha, and while he knows he could probably pass off a few random instances as being awake after hours or up early, more than a few slip-ups would earn him suspicion. Natasha, to her credit, had already texted him after landing, a few lines of complaints about her seat and about the alcohol content of the wine they had served. Clint smiles to himself as he slides the phone back into his pocket, navigating through the murky and bustling walkways of JFK Airport.

He gives up his dignity and decides to wait in line for a cab instead of trying to call a car, and then deposits his things in his hotel room once he gets into Manhattan, his body craving both a long nap and a drink at the same time. He decides against going down to the bar at the Ritz-Carlton and instead opens his laptop as well as some small bottles of vodka that he’d taken from home, dumping them into sodas that he picks up from the vending machine down the hall.

Clint tries to keep his focus, idly scrolling down the pages of the report he’s pulled up, trying not to let his eyes stray to the other side of the bed. He hates the fact that every hotel room, whether it’s New York or Shanghai, reminds him of Natasha and of Bogota and of everything that came after. It’s in every pair of sheets and it’s in the way every floor creaks, it’s in every shower that he can hear running through thin walls and in every door that locks shut with a flimsy chain. Natasha is everywhere even when he thinks he can forget about her, and normally, he doesn’t mind it too much, except on nights like tonight when he does. He pulls out his phone, deciding to break his own rules and at least sneak one text in for the hell of it.

_How’s Latvia?_

_Boring._ He’s surprised when she responds almost immediately, considering the timing, but shrugs it off. It’s not like _he’s_ in any position to be truthful about his activities right now. _How’s Genosha?_

He hesitates. _Hotel’s nice. Would be nicer if you were here. Phone sex?_ He doesn’t send the last two words, his fingers lingering on the keys, wondering whether to type them out before he deletes them entirely.

_I bet. What’s the room remind you of?_

He smiles, stretching out on the bed, kicking his laptop to the side without thinking. _Lima. The curtains you hated because they were too thin. The walls that were too white and reminded you of a hospital._ He sends the text, acquiring a response less than two minutes later.

_I liked Lima._

Clint feels his chest tighten at the words, staring at them as his heart starts to beat faster.

_Yeah. Me too._

 

 

_“It’s not exactly the best of accommodations,” Natasha apologizes as she opens the door to the hotel. “But it’s better than sleeping on the street.”_

_“Hey, at this point, I’ll take anything,” Clint says, limping into the room. He’s in more pain than he wants to admit, a combination of an uncomfortable bus ride with not much room to move his injured leg, and too much walking. He all but collapses on the bed face first while Natasha closes the door behind him -- the definition of class, he knows, and not exactly the definition of a world renowned super spy archer, but he’s done trying to impress at this point._

_“Come on, Clint. Remember what I said earlier?”_

_“Don’t fucking die on me,” he mutters into what he’s sure is a disgusting comforter. He can’t see Natasha’s face, but he swears he can almost hear her smile._

_“Don’t fucking die on me.”_

_He listens to her move around the room, and then the bed dips and two hands gently put pressure on his shoulders. “I gotta check that leg,” she says gently, turning him onto his back. He nods, waving his hand and helping her as much as he can while she removes his pants. Once he’s down to his boxers, she starts working on the bandage that he knows at this point has definitely seen better days, peeling back the gauze gently._

_“Could be worse,” she says after a moment, getting up. “Stitches are holding, but I’m not ruling out a possible infection. And I need to re-bandage anyway.” She pauses as she walks to her bag, pulling out the medical supplies she’d taken from the safehouse. “Does it hurt?”_

_“A little,” Clint admits, because apparently he’s also done pretending he’s too good for pain. It’s been a long day. Or, at least, that’s the excuse he gives himself as she comes back to the bed and kneels down, gently swabbing away dried blood, sweat and pus with a clean towel._

_He reacts before he knows what he’s doing, sitting up a little further and grabbing her by the neck, pulling her down to meet his lips. Natasha stiffens and Clint thinks at first she’s going to pull away, but she doesn’t, even though she adjusts herself so that she’s not putting all of her weight directly on his still-open wound._

_“Are you_ insane _?” Her hair and eyes are wild and she looks slightly haphazard when she finally wrenches away. “I’m still working on your leg!”_

_Clint shrugs. “I didn’t feel like waiting,” he says and Natasha curses under her breath as she secures a fresh bandage._

_“You could’ve waited four seconds,” she says hotly before she leans over again, still being careful of his injury, pressing her lips back down onto his. He immediately kisses back as if he’s pursuing a need he hasn’t realized he’s been craving -- not just the need to feel, but the need to let his thoughts go and find pleasure with someone that didn’t care who he was or what he did for a living, or how many mistakes he had made in his life so far._

_“Natasha,” he murmurs as she breaks away and kicks off her shoes, crawling onto the bed and starting to lick down his neck, her fingers digging bruises into his flesh as if he’s made of something pliable and something soft, and not the hardness of war he’s always thought his body suggested with all its scars. Clint’s never considered himself anything close to soft given his past and what he’s put his body through over the years, but Natasha makes him feel like none of that edginess exists._

_He bucks up -- an open, silent invitation -- and she gets the message, planting kisses along his stomach, down his hips, until she pulls his boxers down enough so that she can continue kissing her way down to the base of his cock. He feels himself instantly harden at her touch and then she’s pulling away, shedding her own clothes faster than he thinks anyone should be able to undress, pushing herself into him. She’s not entirely wet and there’s no condom and it’s rough and the whole thing hurts in a way that Clint normally wouldn’t be comfortable with, but he realizes he doesn’t care._

_He pushes back, crying out as they mold their bodies together._

 

 

When Clint wakes up the next morning, he showers quickly and makes himself in-room coffee before getting dressed, stuffing his gun in the inside pocket of his jacket and his small knife inside his boot. No bow and arrow this time, as much as he had wanted it, but working in crowded cities didn’t exactly make it easy for him to wield attention-catching weapons that made him look like he belonged in a freak show. He stops for a bagel before wandering towards the subway where he takes the train to Lower Manhattan, the location where he’s been told to lie and wait and, eventually, attack. The suspect that he’s trailing has ended up in New York thanks to some secret meetings, one of which is taking him to the gang’s hideout at the back of a seedy Chinese restaurant near the Brooklyn Bridge.

He’s in his spot by early afternoon, even though he knows the meeting isn’t supposed to take place until later, and bides his time by staking out a good spot on the roof of the building that overlooks the alley where the back door to the restaurant is located. Natasha had laughed the first time he had told her that he sees better from a distance, but had quickly learned to quell her amusement when she realized just how much he relied on being able to calculate and aim from far away. Soon, it became something that worked for their partnership as well as their marriage -- an intricate fusion of personalities and talents that complemented one another in a way that Clint had never experienced before. He turns his gaze again, considering stretching out for a bit in light of the fact that nothing’s currently happening, and that’s when the girl catches his eye.

She’s average height and slim, with long brown hair that trails halfway down her back. Clint’s at first confused, because he instantly knows she can’t be the person they’re waiting for, unless he’s been completely lied to about his actual mission -- and unless his targets were really going for inconspicuous. Clint squints down into the alley, his eyes scouting the movements of the girl, noticing the way she walks confidently -- a little too confidently, which means she’s definitely not knowledgeable about what she might be getting herself into by being in this part of town by herself.

“Shit,” Clint mutters when he realizes the girl is, most likely, going to walk straight into his line of sniper fire. He clatters down the side of the building via one of the fire escapes, making more noise than he normally would be comfortable with. The action has its intended result, however, and the girl turns around in surprise.

“Easy,” Clint says quietly, holding up his hands, hoping she can’t see the gun hidden in his clothes. “It’s just me. I’m a good guy. I gotta get --”

His words are cut off by a shot from above that almost takes his head off and he ducks just in time, grabbing the girl and throwing them both against the wall. The girl screams, which Clint wishes she hadn’t because, well, it means any cover at this point is now gone, though he can’t exactly blame her for the reaction. And anyway, he had been the one who had broken protocol in the first place by approaching her.

“Stay here,” he orders, taking his gun out and rolling away from the wall. The shots have stopped but he’s not bothering to let down his guard; he knows the situation all too well. Clint raises his gun to where the first shot has come from when someone gets the drop on him, knocking him to the ground.

He scrambles up, dazed, as the mysterious attacker -- who is also wearing a mask, Clint realizes -- throws a punch that Clint deftly dodges. He returns his own punch, grabbing his knife from his boot while sweeping one arm out to take his attacker’s legs down, following the body to the ground and pinning one arm across their chest before reaching up to rip the mask off.

“ _You_?”

Natasha is staring at Clint with wide eyes and Clint backs away, scrambling off her like he’s been burned.

“YOU?”

In the corner of the alley, the mysterious girl Clint has saved remains pressed against the dirty brick wall, looking back and forth in confusion.

 

 

_“Here’s an idea,” Clint says after another round of impromptu sex and after he’s double checked to make sure his stitches haven’t completely torn, even though the comforter is dotted with splotches of blood. “Let’s get married. For real.”_

_Natasha, who has been staring at him lazily, props her head up on one arm and raises an eyebrow. “Is this because we just slept together?”_

_“No,” Clint says, although he knows he would be lying if he didn’t admit that’s what had spurred the thought. “But it would be easier than going on the run and lying about why we’re together, right?”_

_Natasha shakes her head and rolls off the mattress. Clint follows her lead, sitting up curiously._

_“Okay, what did I say this time?”_

_“Nothing,” Natasha responds, but her voice is tight and her shoulders are even tighter, the skin between her blades taut, like an elastic that looks like it’s on the verge of being snapped. Clint waits, giving himself a space of ten seconds before deciding to call her on her behavior._

_“Out with it.”_

_Natasha sighs loudly and runs a hand through her hair. “Have you ever been married, Clint?”_

_The question probably shouldn’t surprise him, given the conversation it’s stemming from, but he still finds himself caught off guard._

_“No.”_

_“Yeah.” Natasha swallows. “I have, and it’s a mistake I’d prefer not to make again. No matter how much I like you.”_

_Clint’s breath stills at that, because aside from tolerable admiration, Natasha had never really implied that she liked him all that much, much less said the words out loud. To her credit, she seems to realize what she’s admitted, because her face becomes flushed and red all at once._

_“I’m going to take a shower,” she says, picking up her clothes from the floor and quickly walking into the bathroom. Clint lets her go, lying back on the bed until he hears the water start to run, waiting another minute before he gets up fully. He leans over and rubs his hand across his face and closes his eyes._

_If he were to stop and ask himself how he got here -- in a hotel room in Lima with a drop-dead gorgeous girl who was on the run from the law, and not in the juvenile way -- he doesn’t think he would have an answer. He knows he’s going to be dead meat when he gets home, and half wonders if he should just start tendering his resignation letter. It wasn’t his fault that the job had been botched, but, well, he hadn’t exactly bothered to follow up and fix it, either._

_Clint breathes out slowly and then picks up his own clothes, wincing against the still-healing wound as he bends down. Natasha’s belongings are strewn all over the floor, everything clothes and scraps of paper and medical items, and a piece of paper filled with writing catches his eye, along with a small photograph._

_He hesitates, wondering whether or not this counts as a complete violation of privacy, before ignoring his brain and picking up the items. The photograph is of two young girls, one that he can tell is unmistakably Natasha thanks to her red hair and distinct facial features. He turns the photograph over, revealing a scribbled, faded caption on the back, his eyes widening as his brain takes everything in._

_“Ahem.”_

_He jumps at the sound of Natasha’s soft throat clearing behind him and whirls around. She’s half-naked, her body barely covered by the hotel’s small towel, wet hair plastered to skin that’s covered with just as many bruises as his own. And for the first time, Clint feels like he can concentrate on something other than her looks._

_“You weren’t going to tell me you were the Black Widow?!”_

_Natasha’s gaze narrows. Clint all of a sudden wonders if he’s overstepped his bounds way too much, but then she folds her arms, dropping her towel in the process._

_“And when was I supposed to tell you that?” Natasha asks coldly, her gaze unwavering. “In between us fucking and me saving you from sudden death?”_

_Clint opens his mouth and then closes it as Natasha straightens up, still completely naked._

_“Come on, Clint. You weren’t going to tell me you were Hawkeye?”_

_It doesn’t surprise him that she’s realized who he is, mostly because his cover isn’t exactly hidden from the world and also because he had figured that once he admitted he was a spy, she would have done the appropriate research. Still, he feels like he can’t comprehend that right now._

_“I’m a spy, not an assassin!”_

_“Oh, please.” Natasha rolls her eyes and leans over, picking up the towel again. “You’re as much of an assassin as I am. You just didn’t grow up with a notorious background.”_

_“Notorious.” Clint snorts. “Yeah, that’s a good word for the person who killed dozens of women and children in that hospital fire, among other things.”_

_Natasha’s eyes, when they meet his, look like they could shoot daggers. “I didn’t kill them,” she says shortly. “At least, not in the way other people tell that story.”_

_“Yeah, sure,” Clint says sarcastically, sitting back down on the bed. “Jesus Christ. The freaking Black Widow. No wonder people were trying to kill you.”_

_“Yes, lucky me,” Natasha says, raking her fingers through tangled wet hair with violent force. “And lucky you to get caught up with some_ notorious assassin _who was nice enough to save your life, when she could’ve let you die.”_

_Clint falls into silence while Natasha steps into her clothes again, pulling her hair back into a loose bun. She sits down on the bed next to him, but keeps her distance._

_“Were you always the Black Widow?”_

_Natasha looks like she wants to strangle him, and shakes her head. “Obviously not. I did have a life, once. A normal life. Not that I can remember much of anything before the Red Room.”_

_“The Red Room.” Clint’s heard about it, though mostly in passing, in the form of stories other agents would tell while gossiping in the bathroom. “That’s still around?”_

_“Not anymore,” Natasha says in the same cold tone that clearly signals they’re don with the conversation and Clint flinches._

_“I’m sorry,” he says after a long moment. “I just...I didn’t expect that.”_

_Natasha laughs bitterly. “Most people don’t,” she answers. “Unfortunately, most people don’t hang around long enough for me to actually get to know them.”_

_“No,” Clint says, looking around the room, at the messy floor and the blood-stained covers and the open bathroom door, steam spilling out, causing him to shiver slightly. “I guess they don’t.” He pauses and when he meets her eyes, he swears he can see a tinge of hurt settling into her gaze, barely discernible among the anger that resides there._

_“So, uh.” He swallows. “It’s probably the wrong time to ask and all, but any chance you still wanna get married?”_

_Natasha throws her wet towel at his face, but Clint notices she’s smiling._

 


	2. Chapter 2

**PART TWO**

 

The mission is botched. And for the first time since Bogota, that’s the least of Clint’s worries.

They’ve managed to relocate to a nearby abandoned apartment that was supposed to be used as an emergency extraction point, Clint dragging the unsuspecting girl inside with them. Her name was Laura, and she was here on vacation, and that’s all Clint had managed to get out of her before Natasha had taken off, demanding that they move before they got shot or killed. Clint hadn’t bothered to explain their situation, and whether it was out of shock or fear, Laura had complied rather easily.

“I thought you were supposed to be Latvia,” Clint says before the front door has even closed and Laura beelines to the couch, though she doesn’t look scared as much as she looks overly interested. Despite the fact Clint knows both of them can look intimidating -- Natasha especially -- Clint’s never thought they looked like murderers. At this point, however, he figures Laura’s all but past the point of wondering whether or not they’ll kill her.

“It was a cover story,” Natasha says, eyeing him. “I thought _you_ were supposed to be in Genosha.”

“It was also a cover story,” Clint says slowly, realization dawning on him. “ _Please_ tell me we weren’t secretly sent on the same mission for some shady reason. I mean, was there even a suspect that we were supposed to be looking for?”

Natasha falls quiet in deadly confirmation, her loud breathing the only sound in a room peppered by outside noises of honking cars and yelling pedestrians, until Laura finally speaks up.

“Who the hell _are_ you?”

Clint exhales slowly, sharing a glance with Natasha as they converse silently. Natasha shrugs, a barely visible movement, and Clint rubs a hand across his face.

“I’m Clint Barton. This is Natasha Romanoff. We’re --”

“Spies? Assassins? CIA?” Laura’s staring at them in defiance, her eyes dropping to where Clint knows his gun still hangs off his holster, no longer fully concealed. He bites his lip.

“Actually, you were right the first time.”

Laura says nothing and Clint watches her face as she slowly gets up off the couch.

“Wait.”

“I’m not leaving,” Laura says blandly. “If that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t even know where I would go right now.”

Clint nods slowly, turning his attention back to Natasha. His mind is spinning, he has far too many questions about everything that’s happened, and he doesn’t even know where to start. Fortunately, because Natasha has always been Natasha, he knows he doesn’t have to worry about that.

“ _What the actual fuck_?”

“That’s one way to put it,” Clint mutters, sitting down on the couch in the spot that Laura’s vacated. “So you lied to me.”

“For my job,” Natasha says haughtily. “And don’t make me out to be some bad guy. _You_ lied to _me_.”

Clint makes a face. “And then we botched the job. Again.”

“Again,” Natasha says, though she doesn’t sound too upset about that fact. “I don’t understand.”

Clint shakes his head. “Your guess is as good as mine. Is this some sort of secret therapy project?”

“ _Or_ someone trying to set us up behind our backs,” Natasha points out, and Clint sighs. Trust Natasha to always take the more serious, paranoid route. Laura’s moved to the outer area of the small kitchen, looking exasperated.

“Will someone please explain to me what the _hell_ is going on?”

Clint and Natasha twist their heads around at the same time, and Clint suddenly feels terrible that he’s dragged this unsuspecting bystander into their lives, however good it makes him feel about saving her.

“It’s kind of a long story,” he admits as Natasha barks out a laugh next to him.

“What he means is, we probably shouldn’t have involved you in the first place.”

“Too late,” Laura says shortly. “I’m involved. And I want to know _what the hell is going on_.”

Clint doesn’t blame her for her anger, because if he was in her position he knows he’d probably be demanding the exact same thing. He think of Bogota and then remembers he did, once upon a time. Clint gestures towards the couch.

“Wanna sit down? We can make you some tea.”

“Got anything stronger?” Laura asks sarcastically and Clint forces out a smile, getting up and walking past her into the kitchen. He opens up a cupboard and peers inside.

“Instant coffee and Bailey’s?”

Laura nods her approval and Clint gets to work filling a cup with hot water, before dumping both the contents of the coffee pouch and a healthy amount of liquor into the cup, stirring languidly.

“Natasha and I are…”

“Spies?” Laura interrupts as Clint brings her the mug. He clears his throat.

“Married,” he continues, and Laura raises an eyebrow.

“Oh,” is all she says, putting her cup down carefully on her leg. “Why is that important?”

“Because.” Clint grits his teeth together, reminding himself that this information isn’t common knowledge. “We met years ago during a mission -- an unplanned mission -- and then ended up on the run together when things went south. After awhile, we figured out that we work better together than we do alone, and we were already pretending to be a couple for undercover’s sake. So we got married.”

“Okay,” Laura says slowly, and Clint can clearly see the confusion and frustration written all over her face. He half wonders if Natasha will jump in at any point, but she remains silent beside him.

“Anyway, yeah, so...like I said, we got married. Still worked as spies because that’s what we did, and we work mostly separately now. But I guess we were sent on this one mission together without each other knowing.”

Laura looks over at Natasha, who hasn’t moved. “So...you both were told to go on this mission and you just met up here, right now, both of you not knowing each other had been assigned to do the job?” Clint can’t blame the disbelief in her voice; it sounds like the plot of a far-fetched spy show and if he wasn’t used to what he did for a living he’d consider it pretty insane, also.

“Basically,” Natasha says, finally speaking up. She’s studying her nails a little too intently. “I know it’s not exactly conventional, but --”

“But.” Laura barks out a laugh. “I’m sitting here with a real life Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and you’re telling me it’s not _conventional_.”

Natasha glares at her. “I was hoping you’d at least thank us for saving you,” she says, crossing her arms. “Because if we hadn’t, you’d probably be dead right now. Regardless of what went down in that alley, you were walking into a pretty dangerous situation without even knowing it.”

Laura shakes her head, picking up her drink again. “Fine. Thank you for saving me,” she says, punctuating the response with a loud sigh. “But what the hell am I supposed to do now?”

 

 

_They get married both officially and unofficially in Bucharest._

_Natasha finds a small courthouse and signs a piece of paper that states for all intents and purposes that she’s Mrs. Natasha Barton, and they consummate their union by sleeping together in a hotel that costs less than what they’d paid for that morning’s breakfast. When they roll out of bed some hours later, quietly sneaking away under the guise of lingering darkness, Clint’s pretty sure he’s left blood on the covers. But it’s far from the first time that’s happened when they’ve slept together somewhere, so he tries not to care._

_“What do you want to do now?” Natasha asks as they get in the car they’ve managed to steal and hotwire from an unsuspecting hotel resident. “Go on a honeymoon?”_

_Clint grins. “That’s actually not a bad idea,” he says and Natasha grunts._

_“For the record, I was kidding.”_

_“I was kidding when I asked you if you wanted to get married, too,” Clint responds easily and Natasha shakes her head._

_“Maybe at some point, we should stop running around to all these foreign countries and go back to the States. Settle down, figure some things out.”_

_“Ugh.” Clint leans his head back against the headrest. “Where’s the fun in that?”_

_“The fun in that is in the logic,” Natasha says placidly. “We can’t keep running forever, Clint. Maybe we could start our own spy company or something.”_

_“Great idea,” Clint says sarcastically. “And then we can recruit more people to join us, and be just like the FBI.”_

_“For the record, again, I was kidding,” Natasha says, jerking the steering wheel to avoid a car that’s decided to switch lanes without turning on a signal. “You should learn how to get along with my personality if we’re going to actually be married.”_

_“Your personality gets along great with me,” Clint points out and Natasha sighs._

_“I don’t just mean in bed, Clint.”_

_He purses his lips and nods. “Alright, fine. But, you know. We_ are _married now. Maybe we can have a little fun. Pick off some tourists in Paris, go on a wine tasting in Italy…”_

_“And when our unlimited funds run out?” Natasha asks pointedly. Clint sighs._

_“Come on. Can’t we just enjoy being together for a little while? Like Bonnie and Clyde? Barton and Romanoff?”_

_“I thought we were Mr. and Mrs. Barton,” Natasha says, giving him a sideways glance and Clint laughs as he rolls down the window._

_“Yeah, I guess that works, too.”_

 

 

After Natasha has double checked her usual channels, confirming that no one will be coming back to the apartment for awhile, she convinces them to settle in while Clint scavenges around for more food.

“You can make yourself comfortable,” Natasha says finally, gesturing to where Laura’s still sitting a little uncomfortably on the couch. “You don’t have to worry about going anywhere.”

“That makes me feel better,” Laura says with a dismissive eye roll, and Natasha sighs.

“What I meant was, we want you to stay here with us for awhile. Clint and I want to make sure we’re all out of danger.” Clint notices that Natasha’s voice has dropped more than usual and he instantly recognizes the materialization of the gentle, genuine tone.

“You mean you’re going to get a lead on this guy who you were supposed to kill that may or may not even exist,” Laura says flatly and Natasha stares over at her blankly.

“Yes.”

Laura shrugs. “Give me more Bailey’s, and you guys can do whatever you want.”

Clint catches Natasha’s eye and smiles, nodding slowly as he empties another packet of instant coffee into a second mug. Natasha takes advantage of the reprieve to walk over, closing the distance between them.

“I’m going to go back and down and see what I can find,” she says quietly. “Stay here with her? I want to make sure we can lie low for a bit.”

Clint nods. “Yeah. You got it.” Natasha lets out a long breath, and Clint reaches out and grabs her hand before she can move away.

“Hey, Nat.”

She turns, finding his eyes, and he gestures loosely.

“Sorry about all of this. I mean, this whole mess.”

Natasha’s face relaxes into a sad smile. “Not your fault,” she says lightly. “We’ll talk later. Technically, you still owe me from Bogota.”

Clint manages a smile back. “Technically.”

Natasha turns around and walks out the door, and when Clint looks up again, Laura’s giving him a curious stare from the couch.

“Bogota?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Wasn’t going to,” Laura says slowly. “It seems that whatever I got myself into here is more insane than I thought. Spies, undercover operations...and I was supposed to be on vacation.”

Clint bites down on his lip before turning his attention back to the cupboards, guilt surging through him as she says the words. “Where are you from, Laura?”

Laura hesitates. “Midwest,” she says finally. “Well, outside of the Midwest, really. I was born in Kansas City. You?”

“Born and raised in New York, actually.” He picks up the cup and walks towards the couch, holding it out. “But I moved around a lot after I grew up. Ended up in Los Angeles because, well…”

“Because you married another spy?” Laura asks mildly, putting down her now empty mug and taking the new one. Clint laughs, scrubbing a hand across his face.

“Yeah. Funny how life happens, right?”

The look that Laura gives him tells him she thinks this whole situation is anything _but_ funny and Clint sobers quickly, retreating back to the kitchen.

“Looks like we got all the essentials here,” he says, trying to change the subject. “Beans. Rice. Campbell’s soup. A regular gourmet meal.”

“Is it?” Laura asks teasingly.

“Well, more gourmet than I could cook,” Clint admits. “Natasha usually does most of that stuff at home.”

“Really.” Laura sounds amused. “I’d ask what kind of a marriage you guys have, but I don’t know if I want to find out.”

Clint finds himself smiling. “Pretty conventional, actually.” He pauses, thinking of the day’s events. “And then, I guess, not that conventional at all.” He reaches for two cans, bypassing the red and white one. “Rice and beans it is then, if you don’t have a preference.”

Laura doesn’t answer and Clint takes that as a yes, reaching for the can opener and taking two small bowls from the cupboard.

“So, what were you doing? Before you became a spy?”

Clint turns around to find that Laura’s moved off the couch is now standing close to him, regarding him with wide eyes. He tries to think about how to answer, because other people have asked him the question before, mostly colleagues and people he’s met while on assignment. He had never felt like he could open up but for some reason that he can’t explain, he _wants_ to talk to Laura and he _wants_ to make a connection with her, which makes the whole situation feel even stranger.

“Working odd jobs, actually, if you can imagine that.” He spoons cold beans into a white bowl. “Had a few stints at different places to make money, but eventually, I was recruited to do some spy stuff. Got sent on a few missions and made a name for myself, more or less. Nat met me in Bogota, and, well...I guess you know the rest.”

Laura nods. “I guess I do. You weren’t a very good spy.”

“What?” Clint looks up, feeling offended. “I was a damn good spy! _Am_ a damn good spy,” he corrects while Laura grins. “So what if I’ve had a few mishaps? Lots of people in this business have.”

“I don’t doubt it. I’m just saying, from an outsider’s perspective, that’s what it looks like.” Laura leans forward, taking the spoon from Clint and stirring the beans. “You should really learn how to cook, you know,” she continues conversationally. “What happens if your wife leaves you and you have to live on your own? There’s only so much take-out one can order.”

Clint wants to laugh and tell her that threat has come up more than she could probably know, but decides against it. “I’ll figure it out,” he says with a sigh. “And look, I’m being serious. If you have any questions...anything you wanna ask...I know this isn’t exactly something you see every day, and I’m happy to clarify anything. I really do want to put you at ease.”

Laura puts the bowl in the microwave and hits a few buttons, turning around again and fixing Clint with a stare.

“Alright. You want to put me at ease, Clint Barton?”

Clint nods and Laura swallows, taking a deep breath.

“Tell me what happened after you got married.”

 

 

_They stop at a bed and breakfast in the middle of Kensington and Natasha books them a room with a balcony, where Clint immediately puts his feet up on the deck while lounging back in the chair._

_“I need to check your injury again,” Natasha says without looking at him. “We haven’t changed the bandage for a few days.”_

_“Eh, it’ll be fine,” Clint says, waving a hand around. “But if you wanna get me naked, I’m totally down for that.”_

_Natasha rolls her eyes. “Just because we’re technically married now, that doesn’t mean we have to be naked all the time.”_

_“Of course it doesn’t.” Clint smiles. “But you do need to check my bandage anyway, right?”_

_Natasha sighs resignedly. “Come here,” she says from the doorway and Clint makes a small noise as he gets up off the chair, moving back inside. She leads him to the bathroom, where he braces himself against the wall while she takes off his pants and kneels down by his leg._

_“Stitches seem to be holding,” she says as she peels the bandage back, her eyes carefully inspecting the wound. “Which is a miracle, considering how we haven’t exactly been careful when it comes to taking it easy.” She eyes him. “I’d ask if you were feeling any pain, but something tells me you’re used to it.”_

_“Kind of,” Clint admits, wondering if he should tell her about the catalogue of injuries that he’s sustained over the past few years and how that’s more or less hardened his tolerance for both discomfort and anxiety. He decides against it when he sees the look on her face._

_“Hold still.” Natasha replaces the bandage, pressing down a little too tightly as she secures it, and Clint glances at her as she gets up, raising herself back up to full height._

_“You gonna kiss it and make it better, too?”_

_Natasha pretends to slap him lightly before leaning over, kissing the skin by Clint’s shoulder. “Better?”_

_“Quite.” He smiles. “You and I, we’re gonna make a really good team.”_

_“By doing what?” She kisses his shoulder again. “Sleeping with each other, patching each other up, occasionally going undercover and shooting people who we don’t like?”_

_Clint blinks, letting her words settle in his mind. “Yeah,” he says, because he realizes how appealing that sounds. “Something like that.”_

 

 

Clint and Laura are in the middle of trading the rest of the bottle of Bailey’s back and forth, downing it without the help of a chaser, when Natasha walks back into the apartment looking both annoyed and disheveled.

“Good news and bad news,” he says in annoyance as she enters. “Good news is, there actually _was_ a guy we were sent after. Bad news is, he got away. Which is probably better, since we still have to figure out how to deal with the fact that we were both sent here without knowing why, but now we probably have to face questioning and I have no idea where he might be, and --” She breaks off when she notices both Clint and Laura sitting lazily on the couch, relaxed and casual.

“Clint, are you getting her _drunk_?”

“Absolutely not,” Clint says a little too quickly as Laura takes another drink.

“I can hold my own liquor,” she answers. “Promise.” As if to prove her point she stands up easily, offering the bottle to Natasha, who looks at it with a bit of disdain before shaking her head.

“Nat only drinks the hard stuff,” Clint clarifies, shoving another forkful of beans into his mouth. “Belvedere, Tennessee Whiskey...that kind of thing.”

“Oh.” Laura looks a little embarrassed as she withdraws her arm. “Sorry, then. But really, I’m fine. Clint was just telling me some stuff.”

“ _Some_ _stuff_.” Natasha raises an eyebrow. “What kind of stuff is _some stuff_?”

“Relax,” Clint says, getting to his feet “Nothing that would get us in trouble, or that you wouldn’t want anyone to know.”

Natasha stares at him until she’s completely sure he’s telling the truth and then sighs again. “Did you even leave any food for me?”

“Of course.” Clint walks into the kitchen where he’s put aside two additional bowls and hands them over. Natasha takes them with a small smile.

“Just like what you’d cook at home.”

“What’d I tell you?” Clint glances over his shoulder. “See, I was telling the truth about my cooking skills.”

“I didn’t doubt you,” Laura replies as Natasha walks back into the room, sitting down next to her. Laura immediately moves, glancing at both of them as if she’s realized that she’s suddenly the odd person out in the equation.

“I’m, uh...I’m assuming there’s a bathroom here somewhere?”

Clint nods, motioning for Laura to follow him into another room. When he’s given her a few spare towels and confirmed she’s safely locked herself inside with the water running, he returns to the living room to find Natasha staring blankly at the dark television set.

“So what happened out there?” Clint asks with all the nonchalance of asking if she’s gotten groceries, and Natasha sighs as he sits down.

“Like I said, he got away. I think I got a good shot to his leg, but I’m sure he’ll manage to put some distance between us.” She pauses. “Clint, we need to figure out what to do about this.”

“About the guy we were sent to kill?”

Natasha closes her eyes briefly. “No,” she says. “About _this_. About the fact that we were obviously sent here as if we were supposed to be pitted against each other. That’s not normal.”

Clint nods slowly. “I know,” he admits. “Did you call anyone?”

Natasha looks uncertain, but shakes her head. “I’m not calling anyone until we get enough of a handle on this situation. But I’m thinking maybe we can go home and lie low, do some research, and then try to figure this whole thing out.”

“So, business as usual,” Clint says, putting his bowl on the floor. “Going on the run, but hiding in plain sight.”

Natasha bites down on her lip. “Well, it’s better than the alternative,” she says after a moment. “The other option is that we do nothing and wait for someone to check in. If they do, we can maybe try to do some stealth spy work and figure this whole mess out.”

“If it’s even a mess at all,” Clint says quietly, looking up, hating that he’s sharing her paranoia so easily. The more he thinks about it, however, the more it _does_ seem like there’s no other answer. “You really think someone wanted me to kill you?”

“Clint, I don’t know,” Natasha says in frustration. “But this isn’t Bogota. I promise. Whatever this is, I _swear_ it’s not me. You have to trust that, okay?” She takes his hand and squeezes it tightly. “I know our marriage has had some issues, I _know_ , and there are things I do want to kill you for. But I wouldn’t send anyone after you. It would mean sending someone after me, too.”

Clint moves his jaw back and forth, not asking how she knew what he was going to say, and squeezes her hand back.

 

 

_“I need you to be honest with me,” Clint says when they’re in Paris, standing on a bridge with sunglasses and expensive coffee. Natasha nods._

_“Okay.”_

_Clint takes a few deep breaths, going over the words in his mind. “I need to know the real reason you were at that bar in Bogota.”_

_Natasha falls silent. “I told you,” she says after a moment. “People were looking for me. I didn’t know they’d follow me to someplace so public.”_

_“Yeah,” Clint says carefully. “And it’s a nice story, except I did a little digging of my own recently, and found out that you changed aliases about three countries before Colombia. People who were tailing you didn’t know who you were after you left Hungary. So what were you_ really _doing when you were in Bogota?”_

_Natasha’s whole body stiffens and for a long time, there’s no response. “Looking for you,” she says finally, taking off her sunglasses and staring ahead at the water and small boats that glide along the surface of the Seine. “I was sent to Bogota to kill you. So were those guys who shot at us. Well, you.”_

_“Me?” Clint feels his face pale at her words and grips the railing of the bridge more tightly, until his knuckles turn white. “Why the hell would you want to kill_ me _?”_

_“Not me.” Natasha sounds annoyed. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m just a messenger, kind of. I had instructions from the higher-ups to take you out. And a file with your information, so I knew where and when you’d be traveling. I didn’t need to research you to know whether or not I should do a job. A mission’s a mission, no matter how you classify it, right?”_

_“But why?” Clint’s head starts to pound in confusion. “Why the fuck do people want to kill me?”_

_“Clint, hell if I know,” Natasha snaps with such ferocity that he actually believes her. He closes his eyes._

_“Can I ask you something?”_

_Natasha hesitates, not moving her gaze from the water. “Yes.”_

_“Is anything that you told me about you real?”_

_“Of course,” Natasha replies sharply. “I didn’t lie about my past, or who I was.”_

_“You sure?” Clint asks suspiciously. “I mean, is your name even Natasha?”_

_Natasha glares, leaning further over the ledge. “What do you want me to say?”_

_“I want you to tell me the truth!” Clint bursts out, feeling hurt and vulnerable. “I married you, for Christssake!”_

_“Okay, fine.” Natasha whirls around, spilling coffee down the side of her cup and onto her clothes. “My name is Natalia, not Natasha. But no one in America uses Natalia, otherwise I’d stick out like a sore thumb, hence the change when I first came over from Russia. I was sent me to kill you to redeem myself, since I had gone off the deep end a little bit and wasn’t in anyone’s good graces in the spy world, but they didn’t exactly want to throw me to the wolves because they thought I could still be useful. I’m not the best at following directions, but I’m the best kill agent that they’ve had in years, and they knew you’d be tough to find, not to mention tough to take down.”_

_Clint blinks, trying to process her words. “But you didn’t kill me,” he says after a moment, and Natasha shakes her head._

_“I should’ve. But when everyone started attacking and when I saw that you were hurt, I found that all I wanted to do was save you.” Her voice drops and Clint suddenly realizes her tone has shifted into something that sounds completely genuine._

_“Why?” He asks again, unable to figure out how to respond. Natasha sighs._

_“I don’t know, Clint. Maybe despite all this bullshit trying to pull us apart before we even knew each other, we were just meant to be.”_

_Clint chews on his lip. “You really believe that? Fate, meant to be, all of that garbage?”_

_“I don’t think it’s all garbage, but yes, I do.” Natasha shrugs. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”_

_Clint nods, looking around at the tourists streaming across the bridge. “Yeah,” he says, still trying to wrap his mind around the whole situation, because he likes Natasha and he trusts Natasha and he even loves Natasha, despite the fact that her motives have been somewhat less than genuine. He tries to smile. “I guess it’s not so crazy after all.”_

 

 

When Laura comes out of the bathroom, Clint’s sitting on the bed and Laura stumbles slightly on the carpet.

“Oh,” she says quietly. “Sorry. I didn’t --”

“Just didn’t want you to think we left,” Clint interrupts gently. “If you were worried about that sort of thing.”

Laura nods slowly. “I was, at first,” she admits. “But I like to think that two assassins who went out of their way to rescue a random woman wouldn’t just leave her in the middle of Manhattan when there’s a killer on the lam.” She’s joking, or trying to, and Clint finds himself reaching a hand forward in response.

“Natasha and I are trying to figure out what to do.”

“Oh,” Laura says again, running a hand up and down her arm. “So, what are you going to do?”

Clint sighs. “Well, option one is to go home and lie low, do our own research to try to figure this out. Option two is to go home and lie low, wait for someone to call us and see if anyone notices something is suspicious. So, basically, we don’t really have much of a choice.”

Laura moves her tongue over her teeth. “And what about me?”

Clint looks over at her. “I guess…” He stops. “I don’t know, really. You’re free to go, if you want. We’re not holding you hostage here or anything.” He smiles but Laura doesn’t smile back, and Clint puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, look. I know I keep saying it, but I really am sorry. About everything.” He tightens his fingers against her skin. “No one deserves to get dragged into this kind of life unless they really ask for it.”

Laura finally does smile then, moving her hands over the covers. “You know, when I was younger, I used to play dress-up with my older brothers. They would pretend to be spies and I would pretend to be the police officer hunting them down.” She glances up shyly. “My mom would always yell at us because she thought we were setting a bad example, but I never thought of our fun as being violent. I just liked the thrill of playing pretend and helping people. I liked the sense of adventure. It’s why I would do things like go skydiving and bungee jumping when I was in New Zealand studying abroad for college.”

“You’d fit in well enough,” Clint says, still unsure of why he feels such a kinship with this girl. Despite her attractiveness, he knows he would have never bothered to look twice at her if he wasn’t forced into the situation. Now that she’s here, however, and now that she’s invested, he finds himself intrigued in a way he hasn’t felt since Bogota.

 _Since Bogota_. Clint gets up suddenly, practically tripping over himself as he does so and Laura looks up in surprise.

“Clint?”

“Uh, just realized forgot to tell Natasha something,” he says, trying to recover as smoothly as possible. Laura frowns but he doesn’t let himself worry about the fact she can probably see straight through him, walking quickly out of the bedroom and back into the living room.

“What’s wrong?” Natasha asks, looking up from where she’s still eating. Clint balls his fists tightly and Natasha’s eyebrows rise in alarm. “Clint, what’s wrong?”

He looks at her, at Natasha, the woman that he loves even with the mess that is the crumbling parts of their marriage, the woman he’s loved ever since he saw her sitting across from him at the hotel bar, ever since she patched him up and joked with him and took him under her wing. He lets out a slow breath, searching her face, losing himself in the features he knows so well, the expressions that he knows tell a thousand stories but to the naked eye, probably don’t tell any at all.

“Sorry,” he apologizes quietly, relaxing a little. “Just got a little freaked out.”

“By what? Her?” Natasha’s lips turn up and Clint shakes his head.

“Been a long time since we’ve really brought anyone into this,” he says and Natasha sighs, folding her arms.

“We’ve never brought _anyone_ into this,” she clarifies, glancing towards the bedroom. “Is that what this is about?”

Clint doesn’t respond, running his hand over the back of his neck. It is, but he’s not going to say anything.

At least, not now.

 

 

_“I don’t know how I’m supposed to trust you now that I’m aware that you were supposed to kill me,” Clint grumbles as they walk through the streets, shoes slapping against cobblestoned bricks. “I mean, you could still stab me in my sleep, right? Or would that be an issue now because we’re actually married and you have to worry about all the legal stuff?”_

_Natasha shrugs. “I guess you’re going to have to trust me, or you’re back on your own,” she says, her voice turning dull. “I can’t force you to think I’m genuine, Clint.”_

_Clint nods, shoving his hands in his pocket. “I know,” he says slowly. “The thing is, I do believe you. I just don’t...I don’t understand it.”_

_Natasha hums under her breath, stopping and looking around at the stores that line the street. “What’s there to understand? Nothing about the life we chose is easy. Or normal, for that matter.”_

_“Yeah.” Clint tilts his head. “Why did you do it, then? Why did you become a spy in the first place?”_

_“I told you,” Natasha says impatiently. “I came from the Red Room and then I was recruited. It was either that, or jail, or probably a grave.” She shrugs. “I chose job security. Lucky that I did, or I wouldn’t have met you.”_

_“Ha,” Clint mutters under his breath and Natasha eyes him._

_“What about you?”_

_Clint considers how to respond as they start to walk again. “I liked being kind of rebellious,” he admits. “I got a thrill out of searching for danger, that kind of thing. I joined the army when I was young and when I got out of there, I found a way to keep my skills by joining up as a spy.” He smiles half-heartedly. “It’s not really an interesting story.”_

_“Why does it need to be interesting?” Natasha asks. “Our lives are interesting enough without the addition of how we got here.”_

_“Are you always so philosophical?” Clint grouses and Natasha snorts._

_“Only when I really like someone.”_

 

 

“I cannot believe you just suggested that.” Natasha’s voice has been lowered to barely a hiss, but Clint catches every word. “Are you _insane_?”

Clint, to his credit, does look a little embarrassed but still nods. “I may be insane, but I _am_ serious.”

Natasha throws up her hands. “So, what? We just take her in? Like we’re adopting a child? We’re _spies_ , Clint! We’re not a goddamn halfway house.”

“It was a suggestion!” Clint replies hotly. “And she’s not a kid, she’s a grown woman who can make her own decisions, which means she could absolutely tell us no out of her own accord. Anyway, do you have a better idea? Other than just telling her to get out?”

“Isn’t that what we would tell _most_ people?” Natasha asks though she knows the question is moot; they’ve never had this type of problem with civilians before, no matter how much they’ve kept themselves in the public eye. “Why is this girl so different, Clint? Why are you doing this?”

Clint looks embarrassed. “I don’t know,” he says haltingly. “Honest to god, Nat, I don’t know. Do you...do you remember that night in Bogota?”

“How could I forget?” She can’t help the sarcasm that creeps into her voice but she manages to catch his eye so he can see that for as much as she’s being brash, she’s serious. Clint nods.

“I feel like that,” he says slowly. “Not...not like I want to sleep with her or anything, but I feel like I can’t _not_ get involved.”

Natasha sits down on the couch. “I don’t understand,” she says quietly. “You’re basically saying that you feel some kind of connection to this girl you just met and because of that, we’re going to compromise our whole lives?”

“Our lives have already been compromised!” Clint bursts out angrily. “Someone that we trust probably just tried to set us up so that we would kill each other. For the second time!” His face is set somewhere between frustration and fear and Natasha sees it instantly, the switch that’s slowly tipping towards a reaction that’s more severe. She reaches out and grabs his hand.

“Okay,” she says, pulling him down beside her on the couch and stroking his arm. “I get it, okay?” She doesn’t, really, but she also knows Clint too well to know that he’s not going to put his idea aside when he’s got his mind set on following through with it. “At least I know your heart is in the right place, even if our sex life is kind of deadbeat right now.”

That makes Clint laugh a little, and Natasha gives him an encouraging look as she watches him come back to himself.

“You want me to go do the honors of talking to our friend, or do you want to do it?”

Clint looks down at the floor and Natasha nods slowly. “Alright,” she concedes, getting up. “But I’m letting her know that it’s _your_ idea, Clint.” She walks into the bedroom and finds Laura sitting on the floor by herself, staring at the wall.

“Hey.” Natasha knocks on the door gently, even though she knows she doesn’t need to. “You okay?”

Laura looks up at Natasha and gives her a wry smile. “You know, I came to New York and just hoped I wouldn’t get mugged,” she says slowly. “And then I got abducted by two spies who hate each other.”

“We don’t hate each other,” Natasha says, joining Laura on the floor and crossing her legs Indian-style. “Well. Not the way most people do. It’s complicated.” She pauses. “I _am_ sorry, though.”

“Sorry that I got dragged into this mess, or sorry because you totally hijacked what was supposed to be a fun trip to Manhattan?”

Natasha finds herself smiling back. “Both. Look, I know he said it before and it got a little lost in the shuffle, but he means it. You can stay, if you want. For a little bit.”

“With you?” Laura asks dubiously, though she looks intrigued.

Natasha nods. “Yes. We can’t exactly go anywhere right now, except back to the basics. So why don’t you come home with us?”

“Come home with you.” Laura stares at her in surprise, her voice dropping into disbelief. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m actually not,” Natasha says, though she thinks she still might be insane for suggesting it. “But I’d understand if you said no.”

“I’m not saying no,” Laura says, sounding shocked at her own words. “But...are you sure?”

Natasha shrugs. “We have a big place. Well, big enough.” She offers Laura another smile. “You’re still on vacation, anyway. Maybe you’ll figure out where you want to go, and you’ll get to see a little bit of L.A. in the process”

“You’re spies,” Laura says and Natasha sighs, drawing up her knees.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “We are. But what you don’t know is that when we’re at home, we’re essentially living normal lives. We act normally, and we do all the normal things couples do. Mostly. But we only do our jobs when we’re sent somewhere specific.”

Laura eyes Natasha skeptically. “Do you keep guns in your house?”

Natasha nods. “Yes,” she admits. “And knives, and other weapons.” She shrugs. “I told you, we’re spies. But we’re all in this together now, and we’re also willing to let you in. If you want.” She gestures to the room. “If not, we can take you to airport or wherever you want to go and drop you off, no harm done. I swear. My husband will probably even send you home with some of that salty soup.”

Laura laughs quietly. “If I say yes...if I go with you...this is going to be the strangest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“I know,” Natasha says almost instantly. “I get it. I was supposed to kill the guy on the other side of that wall and instead, I went on the run with him and then ended up marrying him. I guess my point is, it worked out. So it might not be the strangest thing you’ve ever done, in the end.”

Laura stares at the ground again and then nods, putting her hand on Natasha’s leg.

“Maybe not,” she echoes. “But it sure feels like it.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**PART THREE**

 

They fly back to Los Angeles the next morning, and the whole thing is rather comical.

For one, it’s a commercial flight, which Clint would normally complain about. But seeing as to how they both have to stay under the radar, neither of them put up much of a fuss, with Clint even allowing Laura to take the window seat.

“You know, offering to pay for my ticket was enough,” Laura says with a small smile as she settles in, sticking her duffel bag underneath the seat in front of her. “You don’t have to keep buttering me up. It was my choice to come home with you.”

“He likes being nice,” Natasha says, rolling her eyes. “He can be passed out somewhere and you’ll still find him trying to buy you a drink.”

“Oh.” Laura smirks. “I might have to try that out, then.”

Clint snorts beside her. “First thing you should learn about Natasha: take her sarcasm with a grain of salt. I’m not _that_ much of a nice guy.”

Natasha doesn’t talk through most of the flight, which Clint is fine with. Laura sleeps on and off, though Clint wonders how much she’s sleeping and how much she’s simply trying to avoid both of them so she doesn’t have to continue to make awkward conversation. Somewhere between Ohio and Texas, when Natasha has gotten up to wait in the abnormally long bathroom line, she finally shifts in her seat.

“Can I help you?” Clint asks, feeling her eyes stray to where he’s trying to figure out a music channel he can listen to that’s not inherently terrible.

“I just was thinking about how strange this is,” Laura says, and Clint raises an eyebrow.

“You’re only realizing that now?”

Laura smiles. “I guess so. But the thing is, I wouldn’t have come with you, I don’t think, if I didn’t feel safe. Or if I didn’t feel like I wanted to.” She looks over at Natasha’s empty seat. “This sounds so weird. But is that how you felt with her? The first time you met?”

Clint laughs under his breath. “Yeah,” he admits, letting his fingers fall away from the button he’s been channel-surfing on. “It was a little different, though. I was the one pushing to stay with her, after she saved my life. But I think --” He stops, swallowing. “I know she wanted it, too. Otherwise she would’ve pushed me away completely. Natasha and I get along because we understand each other when no one else would probably understand us. We realized that early on.”

Laura looks thoughtful. “I can understand that,” she says after a pause. “After being around you.”

Clint laces their fingers together and Laura looks down in surprise, but doesn’t pull away.

 

 

_From Paris, they jet to San Gimignano and rent a villa on the beach. Natasha lies out in the sun with a bottle of wine by her side, while Clint disappears into town and comes back a few hours later with a spring in his step._

_“Got you a ring,” Clint says gaily as he approaches where Natasha is lying on her stomach on the back porch. She’s in a blue string bikini, head down, sunglasses covering the upper half of her face and she doesn’t acknowledge him but Clint hears her laugh into the lounge chair._

_“Clint. I don’t need a ring.”_

_Clint harrumphs under his breath and pulls up a stray chair. “I say you do.”_

_Natasha cracks open one eye as he moves himself closer, holding out a bag. She grimaces, turning over onto her back._

_“Please don’t get down on one knee. I swear to god, I’ll divorce you right now.”_

_“Nah.” Clint shakes his head. “None of that sentimental stuff. You stitching me up was enough of that. Besides, I don’t think I could get down on one knee right now if I tried.”_

_Natasha sighs, lifting her sunglasses. “Your injury is pretty much healed, you know.”_

_“Yeah, healed in the sense that you’re no longer pandering to your poor husband,” Clint says with a mock pout and Natasha groans._

_“You are so goddamn annoying,” she mutters but Clint notices she’s smiling, as if she can’t help the amusement that’s showing through the grumpiness she_ wants _him to notice. “I want you to know, it’s been less than two weeks and I regret marrying you already.”_

_“At least my sex is great,” Clint boasts and Natasha raises an eyebrow, a look Clint can tell means she’s actually considering his statement rather than dismissing it outright as another sarcastic remark._

_“Your sex is actually pretty great,” she agrees and Clint grins as he lets his eyes sweep over her body. He’s getting more used to seeing Natasha naked and each time he does, it never ceases to amaze him how she can feel so confident about her body given the amount of scars she has. There are big ones and small ones, some faded and some that look fairly recent, jagged lines that stretch over her stomach and across her arms, marks that make her look like a poor man’s abuse victim even though Clint knows Natasha would never let herself be that vulnerable. Clint is also aware that underneath the body he fights to keep in shape, he looks pretty much the same -- a mishmash of scars and accidents and mental outbursts gone wrong, though he rarely shows all of himself unless he has to, or unless he’s in the comfort of his own home._

_“See something you like?” Natasha asks, turning her head in his direction and Clint’s face flushes at being caught red-handed, even though her lying out here practically naked is essentially an invitation._

_“Just...sometimes it makes me feel a little better to know that you’ve got as much history as I do,” he says slowly, wondering if he needs to elaborate on the response. Natasha’s small frown makes him realize he doesn’t._

_“It is kind of funny, isn’t it? In a morbid way.” Her fingers dance over her own arms and torso. “I used to hate them. Especially when I had to deal with people looking at them...well, you know.” She shrugs a little haphazardly. “The thing is, each one tells a story. That one, on my arm, that was my first -- my trainer put out her cigarette on my skin, to teach me how to react to pain.” She lets her fingers rest on a dark bruise before moving them to her upper arm. “That one was from my first mission, where I almost died -- guy got me with a knife and hit an artery when I tried to get away. The one on my leg is from where I had to cut myself in order to survive being kidnapped, because someone had surgically implanted a tracker in my skin. The one on my stomach is from a bad turn in Odessa. That one’s not in my file, by the way.”_

_“I didn’t read your file,” Clint says slowly, looking at the messy abrasion on her lower abdomen, and Natasha smiles._

_“Good,” she says finally, closing her eyes again. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t read yours, either.”_

_Clint startles. “But you were sent to kill me. You said you knew everything about me.”_

_Natasha sighs. “Not everything, Clint. And I’m a spy. You of all people should know how that works. I learned what I needed to know, mostly the psychological things -- and your habits,” she adds with a smirk. “I had to know where to find you, after all. And what to buy you, in case I had to work that angle.”_

_Clint blinks rapidly. “So, you...you really didn’t read anything about my past?” he asks tentatively and Natasha shakes her head._

_“In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not exactly...well, I tend not to get involved with the people I’m sent to eliminate,” she says quietly. “I don’t need to know their life history. I learned a long time ago it makes it harder to do the job when you have any sort of compassion.”_

_“Compassion,” Clint mutters, thinking of how she had saved him in the bar and Natasha nods._

_“Yes. Compassion. It’s something I do actually have now and again.” She gestures towards him. “Now, are you gonna give me that ring or not? Because I’m going to need to see how ugly it is.”_

_Clint reaches over, taking the box out of the bag. “You know, in addition to the great sex, I also have pretty good taste in jewelry. I mean, I like to think so.”_

_“Hmmm.” Natasha takes the box from his hands, opening it up and inspecting the object inside as Clint watches her closely. He watches the way her eyes roam over the slim silver band, taking in the single small diamond that juts out from the top like a jewel of the world, before apparently becoming satisfied enough to take it out and slip it on. Clint immediately grabs for her hand, running his fingers over her own and sliding it off._

_Natasha looks up in confusion. “What’s wrong?”_

_“Nothing,” Clint responds honestly. He moves the ring back onto her finger. “Just negates the point of an actual proposal if I don’t get to do it myself.” He meets her eyes and Natasha smiles shyly._

_“Sorry. Overexcited, I guess.” She lifts up her hand, holding it out against the sun. “For what it’s worth, I’ll agree with you about the jewelry thing.”_

_When Natasha smiles again, Clint feels his heart swell._

 

 

“Holy shit.”

Clint exchanges a glance with Natasha as they pile out of the taxi, Laura taking in her first look at their house. As far as houses go, it’s luxurious, Clint knows -- a little _too_ luxurious for his taste, but certainly not as huge as the houses that Clint’s seen while on the job, or for that matter, in areas close to where they’re living. He doesn’t know too much about Midwest housing but he suspects that Laura’s never seen the large, sprawling Los Angeles architecture that makes the space look ten times more open and appealing than it actually is.

“Told you,” is all he says as they get out of the car and Laura raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you guys weren’t kidding about having space. Then again...spies, right?” She throws Natasha a look, and Natasha nods.

“Yes,” she says closes the door of the taxi, shoving a wad of cash into the driver’s hand and walking her suitcase up the steps. “Spies. Come on, Laura. We’ll show you around.”

Laura follows Clint and Natasha up the steps and Clint opens the door with his key, ushering them inside.

“So this is part of your cover, then?” Laura asks uncertainly as they enter the kitchen, looking around the huge ornate space filled with pristine appliances and a large crystal chandelier. Natasha shrugs off her thin coat.

“Kind of. Living together and being married, that’s something we just fell into. The house was part of the deal of keeping up appearances, it’s in the contract for our jobs, but it’s kind of become our own over the years.”

Laura nods in understanding. “Even now that you’re...well...not sure if you’re supposed to kill each other?”

Clint winces at the reminder of why they’ve essentially returned home in the first place. “Yeah, I guess so,” he says with a short laugh. “Anyway, feel free to make yourself at home. The weapons are hidden, unless you find Natasha’s secret knife in the couch.” When Laura gives him a startled look, Natasha steps forward, putting her hand gently on Laura’s arm with a small smile.

“He’s kidding. Spy humor. Get used to it.”

Laura laughs shakily. “Right.” She breathes in slowly, letting out her breath in a long exhale. “Guess I’m going to have to get used to a lot of things around here.”

Natasha gives her an encouraging smile. “I promise, while there are weapons in the house, there are no knives in the couch. We’re not _those_ kind of people.”

“That’s a relief,” Laura says, dropping her bag on the floor. Clint shoves his hands into his pockets, nodding towards the stairs.

“Wanna see your room?”

Laura looks surprised, but nods back. “Sure,” she says a little tentatively, picking up her bag again and following Clint up the large winding staircase. He leads her past the bathroom and the master bedroom, pushing open a door to the guest bedroom, which is a few doors down the long hallway.

“I’m guessing you guys don’t have many people over,” Laura says, taking in what Clint knows are untarnished walls and a spotless bed, a plush comforter and pillows with no wrinkles or creases in sight.

Clint smiles faintly. “Yeah, we don’t exactly have many friends.”

Laura chuckles dryly. “That sounds like something Natasha would say,” she responds, and Clint laughs back.

“Yeah, well...we _are_ married.”

 

 

_Natasha doesn’t expect to spend half of their time in Denmark sitting on the dirty bathroom floor of their crappy hotel room, but then again, she also doesn’t expect to get caught up in a raid when they’re both technically still on the run. It was a testament to their spy background that they had come out of the situation as well as they did, the only downside being that Clint had the unfortunate instance of being taken long enough to be forcefully ingested with a strange combination of drugs. Although Natasha had been able to rescue him fairly easily, and had then been able to do enough on-the-go research to determine that nothing he took would end up being fatal, it did mean that he was being forced into enduring some less than pleasant side effects._

_“Come on,” Natasha says, entering the bathroom and sliding a napkin across the floor. “I made you a sandwich. Eat something and you’ll feel better.”_

_Clint groans, leaning his head back against the wall, breathing heavily as sweat drips down his neck. “If I eat, I’ll get sick.”_

_“I know,” Natasha says, lowering herself to the tiled floor. “That’s the point. And that also means you’ll get these drugs out of your system faster.”_

_“And then I’ll dehydrate myself,” Clint mutters, glancing at the food that Natasha’s pushing closer._

_“And then I’ll continue to take care of you,” Natasha says. “Or, I could leave you here to die miserably, like a drug addict on crack. I’m not pumping your stomach or anything.” She smiles a little too widely and Clint tries to smile back, but doesn’t get to finish making the expression before he’s dragging himself over to the toilet bowl, vomiting heavily._

_“You expect me to eat after that?” he asks weakly as he tries to lift his head and Natasha nods._

_“Yes,” she says methodically. “Come on. Like I said...the faster you get it out, the faster you can start to feel better. I promise.”_

_Clint closes his eyes and reaches out, trying to grab the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Ugh, fuck,” he mutters, curling into a ball on the floor instead and Natasha sighs again, picking up the sandwich herself._

_“If I was a really terrible person, I’d film this and then show it to you later when you can appreciate it.”_

_“I can’t believe you’re still here, actually,” Clint says, more into the floor than to Natasha. “I’m a mess.”_

_Natasha makes a noise that sounds like something between a laugh and a groan. “A mess would be if you actually_ were _in some sort of alcoholic or overdose stupor that I had to save you from,” she says, scooting across the floor. “Fortunately, you’re smarter than that. Well, mostly. It’s not your fault those guys jumped you. Besides, I wouldn’t have been able to trace those drugs that you ingested if you hadn’t seen them before you passed out, so I’m not even going to judge you for this.”_

_“That’s a relief,” Clint mutters, before leaning over to throw up again. “My head feels like shit.”_

_“Everything about you should feel like shit,” Natasha says bluntly. “You had some serious narcotics in your system thanks to these idiots. Just think of it as going through withdrawal, if you’ve ever been lucky enough to have experience with that.”_

_Clint manages to shake his head, glancing up blearily. “You got experience with that?”_

_Natasha hesitates, suddenly realizing she’s talked herself into a hole, dependent on the assumption that Clint did have experience with stuff like this, for whatever reason. “Not drugs,” she says after awhile, figuring she owes him the truth at this point. “But brainwashing. When I was in the Red Room. It made me feel like I was on fire, when they experimented on me. I couldn’t eat for days. My body didn’t cooperate.”_

_“How long did it take before you got it out of your system?” Clint asks, curling into himself on the floor again. Natasha leans her head back against the wall._

_“That’s a funny question. It took awhile. I wasn’t always hunched over the toilet bowl like you were,” she continues. “It was a different sort of exorcism. But every so often, the feelings reared their ugly head.” She looks down at the sandwich she’s still holding, offering it out until it almost touches his lips. “I wasn’t kidding about eating, by the way.”_

_Clint sighs and reaches up slowly, taking the sandwich from her hands and opening his mouth. He gets about four bites down before he’s throwing up again and Natasha puts her hand on his back._

_“Good,” she says quietly, pressing her palm against his spine. Clint tries to laugh, which only makes him throw up more._

_“Never thought I’d hear someone say the word ‘good’ when it came to this kind of situation,” he says as he raises his head._

_Natasha sighs. “Well, I’m sure when people said ‘good,’ they weren’t talking about vomiting up drugs that could’ve kill them if they had the right amount,” Natasha says. “Besides, apparently the world hasn’t gotten the memo.”_

_“What memo?” Clint asks, taking another small bite of sandwich and immediately paling, though he manages to keep it down._

_Natasha looks a little smug. “The memo that I’m not letting anyone kill you that’s not me.”_

_“That wasn’t in the vows,” Clint mutters and Natasha smiles._

_“No, it wasn’t. But those vows might just keep getting re-written if we keep this up,” Natasha says as he leans over again. She strokes the back of his neck gently, fingers pressing into his clammy skin. Clint sighs, resting his face against the toilet._

_“Thanks for staying with me.”_

_Natasha feels her chest tighten with emotion. “Hey, we’re married now. That’s what we do. Stay with each other, right? For better or for worse?”_

_Clint nods again, and Natasha kisses him lightly on his scalp._

 

 

Natasha orders takeout for dinner while Clint passes around beer, though Laura opts for wine when it’s offered.

“Still the strangest thing you’ve ever done?” Natasha asks lightly as they sit down at the table, and Laura hums as she takes a bowl of soup from the big brown bag.

“Possibly,” she says, looking around the table. “For what it’s worth, this is better than a lot of things that could’ve happened to me.”

“Oh?” Clint reaches for an eggroll. “And what things would that be?”

“I don’t know,” Laura says. “Being killed. Being kidnapped. Basically, anything that’s not eating Chinese food in a really nice house with two equally nice spies.” She bites into a forkful of lo mein. “Speaking of spies, have you figured out what you’re going to do about this whole mess?”

Clint glances up at Laura and then over at Natasha. “I’m not sure that’s a discussion for now.”

“You mean you’re not sure if that’s a discussion for _me_ ,” Laura corrects, and Natasha sighs.

“Laura --”

“No, you brought me into this,” Laura defends. “And you basically told me everything that’s going on and you even went so far as to bring me into your house. And now you’re not even going to talk to me about it? You’re going to pretend you can hide it from me?”

“She’s right,” Clint says quietly from across the table, and Natasha gives him a sharp look. “Nat, come on. We basically dragged her into this. This isn’t a secret.”

Natasha takes a few deep, long breaths and then fixes her gaze on the two people in front of her. “Fine,” she says curtly. “Since you really need to know: no, I don’t know what we’re doing about this whole mess. Right now, I’m eating Chinese food and trying to think about what show I’m going to watch before I go to bed tonight.”

Clint finds himself hiding a grin, because the response is so flippant yet so unmistakably _Natasha_ that he can’t help but be charmed by it.

“Sorry I asked,” Laura says, sounding a little bitter as Natasha takes another drink.

“Ask Natasha the first time she met me,” Clint says suddenly, trying to fill the sudden awkward silence. “I couldn’t stop talking.”

“This is true,” Natasha agrees, swallowing down beer. “He wouldn’t stop asking me questions, even though he was seriously injured. If he wasn’t, I might’ve just shot him again, if only to get him to shut up.”

“And you call _me_ dramatic.”

Laura reaches for more food, and sighs.

 

 

_Paraguay is where they finally decide that maybe they should think about going back._

_“It’s not that I miss killing people,” Natasha says as she sucks down a mouthful of gelato she’s bought from a street vendor. “It’s just --”_

_“Wait, wait. Please repeat that sentence so I can record it and use it as my alarm.”_

_Natasha turns around and glares. “Fine. It’s not that I miss killing people. Are you happy now?”_

_Clint smiles. “Yes. I just like hearing you say it. It reminds me that we’re kind of not normal.”_

_“Right.” Natasha turns on her heel and starts walking again. “Anyway, it’s not that I miss killing people, but we should really think about what we want to do when we get back. And we should think about returning to the States in general.”_

_“Already?” Clint asks with a hint of a whine. “I like this.”_

_“I like this, too,” Natasha admits wistfully “But you know we can’t just keep running away like this forever. We’ve already been on our own for too long...it’s amazing that whoever sent you here hasn’t tracked you down.”_

_“Well, I did throw away all my communication devices after Bogota,” he admits. “But I guess you’re right. The eyes have eyes in this world, and Fury would’ve probably found a way to track me down regardless.”_

_“Fury. As in Nicholas J. Fury?” Natasha asks sharply, turning around again. “That’s your boss?”_

_“Not really,” Clint says, shaking his head. “I don’t have a boss, what with the whole free agent thing. I just get assignments and complete them. But he’s kind of like the head of my whole organization.” When Natasha keeps staring in surprise, Clint raises an eyebrow. “Why, you know him?”_

_Natasha snorts, an entirely unladylike sound that Clint thinks he would make fun of if they weren’t in the middle of such an intense conversation._

_“Yeah, I know him. He’s only the most well-known head of_ any _spy organization. My own boss trained under him, once upon a time.”_

_“Shut the fuck up,” Clint says, stopping in his tracks. Natasha shakes her head, and Clint barks out a laugh._

_“Shit. Well. Maybe that stuff about believing in fate wasn’t so funny after all,” he admits. “Or maybe you being sent to kill me wasn’t as much of a random happenstance as we thought.”_

_“Or maybe we were meant to meet and throw away our jobs and find new lives together,” Natasha says pointedly, taking his hand. Clint looks down at their entwined fingers, her ring shining in the glare of the sun, and smiles._

_“You know what, Natasha? Maybe we should return to the States after all.”_

 

 

Laura’s not entirely dumb -- she knows that when Clint and Natasha politely walk her to bed and close the door to her room, they’re going to spend the rest of their night talking in private about their current situation and about things that Laura’s not supposed to be privy to. So she lets them show her to her room again without question, politely says goodnight, and then climbs into the big bed, taking out a thick book. She gets about ten pages into _The Grasshopper Jungle_ before she realizes she can’t concentrate, too keyed up and curious about the fact that she’s staying in a strange house with strange people who also happened to be _spies_.

If her mother ever found out about this, she’d be yelled at six ways to Sunday.

She climbs out of bed and presses her ear to the door, opening it slowly when she’s confirmed silence, and peers into the hallway. The lights are off except for the small sliver of white protruding from underneath Clint and Natasha’s bedroom door, which is tightly closed. Laura tiptoes quietly out of the room, keeping her gait slow and even, until she’s walked stealthily through the hallway. She slips into the room at the other end of the hall that she remembers passing during her tour earlier.

It’s a study, or at least, the kind of study you have if you’re a spy, Laura assumes. There are bookshelves filled with thick dusty tomes and maps on the wall and piles of papers stacked in corners and strewn over a desk, but Laura has no idea what any of the scribbles on the papers mean when she catches a glance. Everything else important seems to be locked away in file cabinets that line the walls.

She feels slightly bad rifling through things like she’s snooping, even though she knows that she is, and the excuse she gives herself is that she deserves to know about the people and situation she’s currently chosen to involve herself with. But aside from a few random photos that could very well be vacation memories judging from the normal poses and exotic locations, there’s nothing that Laura can find that gives her any clue about Clint and Natasha’s past.

_**BARTON, CLINTON AND NATASHA.** _

She catches the piece of paper sticking out from underneath a paperweight in the shape of a bird, and picks it up curiously. So they had the same last name, then. She’d figured as much, given they had said they were married, but she also realized she was only assuming. There’s another line of typed letters underneath their name and Laura leans forward, tugging the paper free of the glass hawk that’s holding it down. When she squints to make out the words, she finds her breath catching her in lungs.

“Can I help you?”

Natasha’s quiet deadpan sounds like a scream in the silence and Laura jumps in place, letting the paper flutter to the floor. Laura swallows, trying to reconcile what she’s just read with Natasha’s hard eyes, messy hair, and multi-colored pajamas.

“You...you’re assassins?”

Natasha’s eyebrows lift high, and Clint appears behind her, looking chagrined.

“We told you we were assassins.”

“No,” Laura says curtly. “You said you were _spies_ , you didn’t tell me you were _assassins_.” She pauses, looking worried. “That paper says you’ve killed people. Do you really kill people?”

“We --” Clint breaks off when he sees Natasha’s face. “Yes, we kill people. What, you didn’t do your background check before you decided to come stay with us?”

Clint’s tone is light and teasing but Laura knows her face is about as pale as the ivory table sitting against the wall.

“Hey, hey. Laura.” Clint’s talking again, this time more softly. “I’m sorry if you’re freaked out. I swear, we’re not bad people. We’re not these scary people who are going to pretend to be nice and then hurt you, I promise. We only kill bad guys. That’s part of our job. That’s what we were going to do when we met you.”

“But I let you bring me home,” Laura says slowly, realizing for the first time how stupid she must be and how little she’s thought this plan through. I...I let you bring me here, and I don’t even know you. I didn’t even know what you did except for the fact that you were spies...I let you bring me here and I don’t even know why!”

She’s shaking, vibrating with both anger and fear, and Clint and Natasha stare at her with expressionless looks -- though Laura thinks there might be the barest hint of understanding and sadness buried somewhere in Natasha’s eyes.

“I let you bring me home and I don’t even know why,” Laura repeats and Natasha sighs softly.

“Come out of there, Laura. At least sit in the kitchen if you’re going to have a breakdown. The only thing we do in our study other than look at reports and assignments is have sex.”

Laura can’t tell if Natasha is kidding or serious but either way, she finds herself laughing against her will as Natasha disappears. She follows her down the large staircase but despite her words, Laura opts to sit in the living room instead, curling up on one of the big chairs and trying to steady her nerves and emotions.

“Nightcap?”

She looks up and meets Clint’s apologetic face as well as a glass filled with what Laura recognizes by the smell as whiskey.

“It’s not drugged or anything, is it? I mean, I did just break into your study and snoop through all your things.”

Clint laughs softly, shaking his head. “I promise it’s not. Anyway, don’t feel so bad. If we really didn’t want you to snoop somewhere, you’d know. You haven’t tried to get into our bedroom yet.” He nudges her shoulder and Laura smiles tentatively, taking a long drink.

“I know I freaked out. I’m sorry. I do trust you, as strange as it sounds. I just --”

“I know. Look, this situation is...it’s not normal,” Clint breaks in gently as Natasha enters the room holding her own drink. Laura catches her eye as she sits down across from her. “We have secrets, and it comes with the territory of what we do.” He takes a breath. “That being said, I’m sorry that we weren’t more honest about the specifics of our job.”

“What were you supposed to say?” Laura asks with a snort of laughter, because suddenly, she finds this whole thing almost hysterical. “You kill people for a living, I’m sorry, have a nice day?”

“Well, it would’ve been honest,” Natasha says and Laura watches her face, wondering if she’s regretting taking her in. She figures she can’t blame her. Who was she to walk into a life of spies and guns and secrets, when she was just a plain Midwestern girl with a sharp sense of self that was supposed to be taking a well-deserved vacation?

“If you want me to, I’ll leave.”

“Leave?” Clint looks surprised. “Why would you leave?”

“Because I don’t belong here?” Laura asks in a bit of exasperation. “You took me in for protection and I’m grateful, and this has all been fun and I like nice houses, but this isn’t the life for me.”

“Well, you can’t leave yet,” Clint says matter-of-factly and Laura raises an eyebrow. “I’m serious,” he continues. “You haven’t even even seen Santa Monica or the pier or the beach or anything that made coming out here worth it. We’re terrible hosts if you leave having just seen the inside of a mansion.”

“He’s right, you know,” Natasha adds, taking another drink. “About the terrible host part, I mean. We’re not really used to that part of this life.”

Laura looks at Natasha and then at Clint, and feels herself start to smile against her will. “Okay,” she says slyly and a bit resignedly. “So tomorrow, I demand you both take me to the beach.”

Clint blinks a few times before his face slots into a grin and he nods, holding up his glass.

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

 

_Clint knows Natasha has many skills, but he’ll give her credit for one thing -- she knows how to travel._

_She swings for business class on the transcontinental flight and even uses her connections and privileges to get them on board first, allowing them comfortable time to settle into the large leather seats._

_“Oh, god. This is heaven,” Clint moans as he sinks back into the reclining chair, sighing. “_ Heaven _. Do you know how many commercial flights I’ve been forced to fly? God, I just want to kiss you right now.”_

_“You’re welcome,” Natasha says with a small sigh, pulling her legs up. “Also, the kiss thing can happen anytime. You’re my husband, remember?”_

_Clint grins, leaning over to meet her lips. “Yeah, I sometimes forget. Just cause it’s --”_

_“Strange? Not normal?”_

_Clint shrugs. “Well, let’s face it. Is there any other way our lives could have gone, doing what we do, especially considering where and how we met?”_

_“True,” Natasha admits as she slumps back in the seat, closing her eyes. “When we return to the States, we should figure out exactly how to proceed. You need to cover your bases.”_

_“Don’t fucking remind me,” Clint mutters. “Don’t you need to call your boss?”_

_“Already did,” Natasha says, flashing him a smirk. “Perk of being a free agent more often than not. And she knows I’m bringing you in. Alive.”_

_“Oh. And did you tell her we got married, too?” Clint asks sarcastically, only a little miffed that Natasha had apparently gone behind his back without telling him._

_“No,” Natasha admits. She twirls her wedding band and glances up. “Should I have told her?”_

_Clint finds himself thinking a little too hard, and shrugs as one of the crew members of the plane starts walking down the aisle, offering hot cloths and alcohol and the promise of eternal comfort on the long flight._

_“Nah. Let’s keep it between us a little longer.” He smiles. “I like you being Mrs. Barton only to me.”_

 

 

When Clint wakes up the next morning, he thinks he can almost forget the whole strange incident of Laura snooping around in their house and late night talks, especially when he wakes up and finds Laura sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee out of his BEST HUSBAND EVER mug, outfitted in one of Clint’s old army sweatshirts.

“Your, uh. Your wife made me breakfast,” Laura says when Clint enters, indicating her empty plate.

Clint nods slowly. “Well, less for me to do in the kitchen. Good morning, then. Still up for the beach today?”

“You better believe it,” Laura says, a smile stretching across her freckled face. Clint realizes it might be the first time he’s really seen her smile, at least without stress or worry hiding behind her expression, and his insides twist in a way he’s not used to experiencing.

“Good,” he says, staving off the feeling. “We’ll get ready and head out after breakfast to make sure we get a good spot. Maybe we’ll grab some lunch along the way so we don’t have to worry about paying for overexpensive beach food. Nat’s going to join us later, when she gets done with errands.”

“You mean spy things,” Laura corrects as Clint walks across the big kitchen and pours himself coffee.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I mean legitimate errands. It’s part of our routine in the morning. Post office, library, grocery shopping...sometimes.” He flashes her a smile. “We _are_ normal people, you know.”

“Right,” Laura mutters, clutching her cup and Clint wonders if she’s thinking of last night. “How could I forget?”

Clint sighs and downs another mouthful of coffee. “Not sure how you packed for this vacation, but Natasha said you could borrow one of her suits if you needed to,” he says after a beat and Laura looks up in surprise.

“I actually...yeah.” Her face flushes pink. “My packing list for New York didn’t include planning for pool time. Or planning for West Coast time.”

“I figured,” Clint says with a half-grin. “I’ll grab it for you later. Feel free to make yourself comfortable in the meantime. I mean it. The balcony is really nice in the morning, if you want some fresh air.”

Laura smiles slowly and excuses herself after another moment. Clint watches her go, shaking his head a little before cleaning up the kitchen and pouring the rest of the coffee into a large travel canister, heading upstairs to grab Natasha’s swimwear. When they finally do leave the house an hour or so later, he’s surprised to find how normal he feels sitting next to Laura, who is covered in a short sundress while leaning her head out the window, dark hair whipping across her face and into her tortoiseshell sunglasses.

 _Keep it together, Barton_ , he thinks when he feels his gaze lingering a little too long, eyeing the way her neck is arched against the seat. He clutches the wheel more tightly until they’ve driven through the clogged freeways and intense smog, arriving at the beach that Clint likes to frequent on occasion. It’s more private than touristy, but Clint figures it’ll do.

“Nothing like Kansas City, huh?” he asks as he drags two blankets from the car, motioning for Laura to follow him until they find a less crowded spot to sit. He spreads a blanket onto the sand and Laura rolls her eyes.

“I’ve been to the beach before,” she says with a smile. “But I appreciate you taking the time to give me a real vacation.” She leans over, stripping out of her sundress, revealing the blue and white string bikini that she’s borrowed from Natasha, the same one Clint knows Natasha wore when he gave her the ring in San Gimignano. Clint sucks in a gasp, hastily closing his mouth which he knows has dropped open unnecessarily, because while he’d _known_ what he’d given Laura to wear and had seen Natasha in the same suit often, seeing the outfit on Laura -- seeing Laura’s delicate curves and slender legs and the way her arms stretch when she pulls back her hair -- is sending all the blood to his lower extremities in a way he can’t control.

“You, uh...anyway. You clean up well,” he says lamely, hurrying to take off his own shirt. When he looks at her again, he thinks she’s hiding a small smile.

“Thanks, Barton,” she says with a wink, sitting back down and rubbing sunscreen over her face before lounging back on the towel. Clint hasn’t realized he’s still standing, frozen in place, until Laura tugs at his blanket.

“Don’t you spies ever just _relax_?” Laura asks, shielding her eyes from the sun as she glances up. Clint mutely sits down, angling himself onto his own blanket. He’s not exactly sure why he turns to Laura, placing his lips on her own, but the moment he does so he finds that he can’t pull away. Laura, to her credit, only startles a little bit when Clint kisses her but then kisses him back languidly, not moving until they both mutually come up for air.

Clint stares into Laura’s face, her curious brown eyes and windswept hair flecked with grains of wet sand, and tries to think of something to fill the awkward silence that hangs between them.

“Not bad,” Laura says with a nod, grinning. She licks her lips suggestively before turning over and closing her eyes.

By the time Natasha arrives a few hours later, Laura’s engrossed in book six of _Harry Potter_ and Clint’s sucking down a Corona like it’s water, and they’re trading innocent stories about missions and school, and Clint can almost forget that he kissed the girl he had taken home while his wife wasn’t present.

 

 

 _Clint’s not as much of a world traveler as he pretends to be; he’d been_ around _the world plenty of times but there are pockets of places he hasn’t been to, and a lot of places he_ has _been to are the same exotic locations over and over again._

_And unlike his new wife, he’s realizing he apparently has no idea how to handle jet lag._

_“Morning,” Natasha says when he groggily walks into the kitchen of her New York bolthole more than thirteen hours after they land. “How’s the next century?”_

_“Funny,” Clint mutters, sliding into the chair and rubbing his eyes. “Maybe if you kept your beds less comfortable, people wouldn’t pass out in them.”_

_Natasha smiles thinly, holding out a coffee cup. “You do remember we’re married, right?”_

_Clint laughs tiredly. “Yeah, yeah.” He glances around the small apartment, which for some reason is nothing that he’d ever think Natasha would own. Granted, it was a bolthole, and Clint knew as well as anyone else that boltholes could be anything from a necessity created years ago to some place secret and hidden and personal, just in case there was ever any compromising reason to get away. Still, between the fine china in the cupboard, the decorative wind chimes on the small balcony just outside of the living room and the dove patterned bathroom decorations, Clint feels like he’d never expect any of that from the Black Widow._

_“What?”_

_“What?” He looks up and finds Natasha staring curiously at him. “Oh. Nothing. It’s just...this isn’t where I expected the Black Widow to live.”_

_Natasha snorts quietly. “Not exactly a lair filled with torture items imbued in Russian cold, is it?”_

_“That wasn’t what I meant,” Clint grouses, but Natasha’s smiling and Clint finds himself smiling back, a confirmation that her tease wasn’t rooted in malice. “Just...I dunno. Fine china? Chairs that look like they’re straight out of Crate and Barrel?” As if to prove his point, he shifts uncomfortably in the plush seats._

_Natasha sighs and looks a little wistful. “This was one of the only places I stayed at or came back to for more than a week at a time, when I started this job.” She looks down at her mug, concentrating on the liquid as if she’s a fortune teller trying to discern a hidden message. “I didn’t expect to come back anywhere, really, but I kept coming back here. I’d bring little things every so often when I could find them on my travels...I guess it made it feel more like a home that I never had. Anyway, I ended up hiding out here for awhile after I got shot pretty badly on a mission that went south. I could barely leave to buy food, let alone take a shower or do anything on my own. But while I was here, I realized it wasn’t a terrible place to call a home. If I could ever have a home.”_

_Clint watches her talk, noticing how her voice gets progressively softer with each sentence, as if she’s afraid to be so open about her obviously vulnerable feelings. He takes a sip of coffee and lets out a sigh as the caffeine hits his throat, deciding to change the subject._

_“So, uh. How long are we staying in New York? I mean, I need to know if I should stock up on bagels.”_

_Natasha looks up at that and grins, all traces of hesitancy and sadness dissipating along with the change in her expression. She leans over so that he can clearly see the cleavage peeking out from underneath the loose cut Yankees World Series Champions shirt she’s wearing. “Bagels are food, and food is negotiable,” she says casually. Caught off guard, Clint spills his coffee just enough so that the hot liquid hits his the part of his leg not covered by his boxers._

_“Natasha --”_

_“Clint. Forget about food. As my husband, you should probably think about stocking up on condoms.”_

 

Natasha treats Laura and Clint to dinner at a local pub near the beach, where after three whiskey sours and four beers between all of them, they’re feeling loose enough to joke about how strange this whole situation really is. Laura knocks her knees a little too close to Clint’s and brushes her fingers a little too softly against his arm when they reach for more fries, and between her sly movements and Natasha cuddling up against him every so often, the way he knows she does when she’s had too much to drink, he’s honestly surprised he makes it home without either of them noticing his pants are feeling way too tight.

He then _still_ doesn’t know if it’s Laura, if it’s the fact he feels guilty about kissing her or the fact he can’t stop thinking about how she looked in Natasha’s suit, or if it’s the fact that when Natasha had gotten to the beach she had revealed her own barely-there suit that had made his insides jump. But when they get home, after they’ve sent Laura off to bed, he can’t stop himself from shoving Natasha against the bedroom wall. Natasha balks in surprise at Clint’s sudden show of intimacy but doesn’t push him away, instead pulling off his clothes as he picks her up and throws her onto the bed. Clint practically rips her pants and swimsuit bottoms off and climbs on top of her, pushing himself inside, thrusting intensely until Natasha’s own thighs tighten, her hoarse screams muffled against the pillow she’s pressed into her face.

“You know, the last time we fucked like this, you were bleeding out,” Natasha says conversationally once she can talk again. Clint takes a moment, trying to get his breath back.

“This is the first time we’ve had sex in months,” he says as the thought dawns on him, and he tries not to feel guilty about the fact that the need to get himself off wasn’t _just_ because of his wife.

“So it was bad?” Natasha turns over in bed, pulling the plush covers up to her chin and Clint rolls his eyes.

“I didn’t say _that_. Clearly, it wasn’t.”

Natasha grins. “In that case, maybe we should invite Laura in sometime.”

“Natasha!” Clint feels his face heat up, warmth flooding into his cheeks, and Natasha sighs.

“Come on, Barton. Don’t lie to me. I know you kissed her at the beach.”

Clint swallows, sweat beading onto his forehead, a reaction that he knows has nothing to do with their previous activities. “How -- how did you --”

“ _Seriously_?” Natasha looks utterly insulted. “I know you by now. And I’ve known that you have a thing for this girl ever since you suggested bringing her back here. I’m not pissed about it, Clint. I mean, honestly, she’s pretty hot. And smart. I wouldn’t mind getting her into bed.”

“Okay, look. I know it’s like, our thing, but I don’t tell _you_ when I’m thinking of sleeping with someone else,” says Clint moodily. “Particularly someone who is sleeping in our house already.”

“Well, what’s the harm?” Natasha asks in a bored tone, as if they’re making a grocery list. “She likes you, you like her, I think I’m pretty attractive and I’m confident in my flirting skills...maybe we should think about it. Can you imagine _that_ therapist visit?”

Clint laughs sardonically. “Nat, she’s not even from here! How can we expect her to just...I don’t know. Stay with us or do anything with us when she has her own life? And when we have _our_ own lives? At least when I met you, we were both spies.”

Natasha shrugs, looking at Clint with a sad smile, all the teasing dropping away as she finds his eyes. “You threw away your life for me, once upon a time. And look where it got us.”

 _Look where it got us._ Clint closes his eyes against a mind that refuses to shut off, while Natasha wraps an arm around his waist.

 

 

_“You said you had a job for me,” Clint says, twisting his fingers together nervously as Natasha leads him through the hallway of the huge building. “You didn’t say I had to make an impression.”_

_“Oh, quit being melodramatic,” Natasha says with a loud sigh, her heels clicking against the floor. She’s dressed more corporately than Clint’s ever seen her, down to pantihoes and a pinstripped jacket. “She already knows you. Well, knows about you, anyway.”_

_“And I’m supposed to be dead, so I don’t think what she knows is going to be good for me,” Clint refutes, following Natasha through wide glass doors._

_“But you’re not dead, because I saved you, and then I vouched for you,” Natasha says easily. “So just suck it up and put on that charm you’re so good at, and let’s get through this. Okay?”_

_Clint nods, trying to calm his anxiety as Natasha walks through another long hallway, coming to a stop in front of a pair of mahogany doors. She knocks politely with three quick raps._

_“Come in,” a curt female voice answers from the other side of the wall and Natasha pushes open the door with a flourish and a smile._

_“Well, well, well. How was your sabbatical, Natasha?”_

_Natasha smiles tightly. “I’m well aware of my misdemeanors and prepared to report them, Maria. This is Clint Barton.”_

_“Hawkeye,” says Maria, nodding as she gets up. “I’m Maria Hill. I heard you trained under my mentor.”_

_“Uh. Kind of.” Clint shifts his weight, phantom pain from his long-healed gunshot wound sending fire across his skin. “I mean, he’s not my direct boss. I never really worked with him. But he’d show up from time to time and give me orders and stuff.”_

_“Interesting.” Hill looks down at the papers strewn across her desk. “You’re a free agent, though?”_

_“For the most part.” Clint gestures towards Natasha. “Well, I mean, I’m not exactly sure what I am now, but I was, I guess.”_

_Maria looks at him curiously, and then switches her gaze to Natasha. “I have to admit, when we told Romanoff to eliminate you, I didn’t expect to get a phone call saying she’d saved you,” she says slowly. “Or gone off the grid with you. It’s not exactly behavior that’s typical, even with this life.”_

_“That, uh...that last one might’ve been my fault,” Clint mumbles and Maria barks out a laugh._

_“So it would seem. Romanoff seemed intent on bringing you in, however, and made a good case for your skills. You_ do _want to stay in the spy game, correct?”_

 _Clint hesitates, because he does, but he also knows that right now, he really has no interest in continuing to do this stuff unless it involves Natasha. And although she’s promised she’d help get him another job where his skills could be put to use, that was something she_ hadn’t _quite promised._

_“Is something wrong, Barton?”_

_He realizes he hasn’t responded, his silence dominating the room. “I...uh.” He shrugs. “I like working with Natasha. I want to keep working with her.”_

_Maria’s eyebrows shoot up and Clint wonders if he should just go ahead and spill the beans, even though he knows it would be entirely inappropriate to do so given the situation and given the fact that he’s only known the woman in front of him for all of five minutes. Natasha suddenly reaches for his hand, speaking up before he realizes what she’s saying out loud._

_“What he means is, we kind of got married.”_

 

 

The first time Laura wakes up, it’s because Clint and Natasha are having loud, unrestricted sex down the hall.

She’s surprised she wakes up at all, because dinner and drinks and the drive home had hit her pretty hard, hard enough that she had passed out in the backseat against her will, only waking up when Natasha’s hand had gently brushed across her face. She’s _not_ surprised that Clint and Natasha are going at it, considering the way she had seen them interacting during dinner and the way Clint had been trying to hide what he thought was an erection no one could see. She realizes that the sounds of lovemaking comfort her, because at least it meant there was one other aspect about this relationship that was normal.

The second time Laura wakes up, however, it’s not because of passionate moans or grunts, but because of a soft crash downstairs. The sound causes her heart to leap into her throat as she sits bolt upright in bed, trying to steady her breathing as her mind works to rationalize the moment.

 _Could be an animal_ , she thinks. Or possibly something as mundane as a picture falling off the wall or Clint going to the bathroom and knocking something over. She can’t imagine that Clint and Natasha, being the spies that they were, wouldn’t have some sort of massively complicated security system in place for things like break-ins, given that their house was as huge as their pasts seemed to be.

Laura trains her ear towards the door, sliding out of bed soundlessly as the unmistakable sound of footsteps that faintly echo in her eardrums. She tries to control her hyperventilation by reminding herself of who she’s living with and the fact that when it came down to it, she was probably better protected here than she would be on her own.

A hand clamps down on her shoulder and before she can scream, a palm presses tightly against her mouth and nose, forcing her into silence and cutting off her air supply. It takes a second longer than she thinks it should to focus on Natasha’s tangled red hair, illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the windows.

“Holy fuck,” Laura breathes when Natasha slowly removes her hand, trying to remind her brain now is definitely _not_ the time to think about how close Natasha’s face has been to her own, and how she could practically feel her breath on her face.

“Quiet,” Natasha hisses, gesturing towards the wall, where Laura sees a small door has been opened. Despite the obviously serious situation she wants to laugh, because _of course_ people like Clint and Natasha would have secret passageways in their home. “I need to know if you can use a gun.”

“I...what?” Laura whispers back, trying to focus on Natasha’s face in the dark. She can almost see Natasha roll her eyes in a show of impatience.

“Laura. Can you use a gun?” Natasha whispers and Laura nods, swallowing against a dry throat.

“Yes,” she says, knowing the answer is only half a lie. She had grown up shooting her father’s gun on a few occasions, but certainly not enough to feel totally comfortable handling a firearm.

“Good,” Natasha mutters, shoving what Laura can tell is a loaded nine-millimeter into her hand. “Stay close to me. Clint’s heading them off. I’ve got your six.”

Laura’s head spins with adrenaline as she takes in Natasha’s curt and clearly serious instructions. She wants to ask what’s going on, but she knows it’s absolutely not the right time.

“Is this --”

“Shut up,” Natasha hisses as she walks in front of Laura, motioning for her to follow. She opens the door cautiously, gesturing towards the floor, where Laura follows her lead and steps over a prone body swathed in black. Her heart beats louder in her chest as they move along the balcony and towards the staircase.

“Hey!”

Laura’s head jerks up at Natasha’s voice loudly breaks the silence. Laura realizes she’s both distracted the man who is pointing his gun from somewhere below them and also alerted Clint, who is downstairs fighting off another intruder. Natasha points her gun and shoots, sending a bullet into the man’s chest and he topples back down the stairs.

“On your left,” Clint yells back easily as Natasha angles her gun downward, catching one of the other men in the arm. She grabs Laura’s hand and jerks her behind her body, but not before fingers catch Laura around the arm, forcing her to panic and discharge her gun in the direction of the attack. For a moment, she’s terrified she’s hit Natasha by accident, but when Natasha lets go of her she sees she’s hit a man with sandy blonde hair. There’s a dark stain spreading along his torso, and as she stares down in shock, she realizes with a start that the house is now quiet, the dust settling both metaphorically and physically. Clint walks tiredly up the stairs, blood covering his hands, his gun loosely gripped between his fingers.

“Four guys, all armed. Still think we weren’t set up to kill each other, Nat?”

“Well, I believe now that New York wasn’t a coincidence,” Natasha agrees with a small sigh, glancing at him as he reaches the top of the stairs. He shakes his head.

“A couple surface wounds, but I’m good. You?”

“Nothing, considering what it could’ve been with them sneaking in here like this.” They both glance over at Laura, who is looking down at her hands.

“Sorry,” Clint says after a beat. “We probably should’ve…”

“No, no. By all means, please continue to have your own personal moment,” Laura says, waving her hands around, the gun clattering to the floor. “I’ll just be waiting in the wings for you to ask me how I’m doing.” She turns around and heads back down the hall, walking into her bedroom and slamming the door behind her. Part of her wants to throw up and part of her wants to hide under the covers of the big bed, although Laura’s never been one to hide from anything in her life.

She sits down instead, pushing hands through her hair and looks up when Clint enters the room with Natasha, an apologetic look shadowing his features. He closes the door quietly and then sighs as he shoves a hand across his face, leaving a smear of blood.

“Okay,” he says after taking a measured breath, his tone even and placating. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Laura. How are you doing?”

“How am I doing?” Laura pauses and barks out a laugh. “How am I doing.” She shakes her head slowly and then gets up off the bed, realizing her legs are shaking. “Well, let’s see. I was on vacation and got jumped by two spies who are actually assassins. I was practically forced into coming home with them to L.A., and then I basically lived here while trying to forget that they kill people for a living. Then all of a sudden, I’m going to the beach with them and eating dinner and pretending that everything is completely normal, and then people who want to kill you are breaking into your house in the middle of the night and I’m being asked if I can suddenly use a gun _and_ I’m shooting people randomly and _you’re_ shooting people and --”

“And?” Natasha asks mildly, raising an eyebrow, seemingly unaffected by Laura’s tirade.

“And...and…” Laura finds she can’t make herself continue so she marches forward and kisses Clint, grabbing him around the neck with both hands. When she finally breaks away, reveling in how good it feels to unleash her emotions, she’s immediately met with Natasha’s lips, hard against her own.

“Oh my god, I have been waiting to do that since I saw you in that fucking string bikini,” Natasha says, kissing her again for good measure, while Clint stares at both of them in surprise. Laura feels her cheeks grow hot.

“I…”

“What? You’re gonna tell me you weren’t thinking of doing the same thing to either of us?” Natasha challenges and Laura swallows down her response.

“I -- this is -- we were just attacked by people who want to kill you and we were shot at! And you still have blood on your hands and I’m sitting here saying I want to kiss you and I _am_ kissing you, and --”

“Laura.” Natasha smiles widely and she interrupts her with another kiss. “Laura, come on. Sit down. You _really_ don’t even know how Clint and I first met.”

 

 

_“Hey.”_

_“Hmmm?” Natasha’s voice is soft and curious as it filters out from behind the glass door of the shower, and Clint sits precariously on the shiny tiled floor he’s still trying to get used to, his bare back pushing up against the equally shiny white wall._

_“How’s the water temperature?”_

_Natasha opens the shower door, letting out a billow of steam. “Seriously? That’s your big important question on our first night in a mansion?”_

_Clint shrugs, leaning sideways onto his arm, partially because at this angle he can almost see every curve of Natasha’s naked and wet body as it leans away from the spray of water. “Well, not the only question. But I’ve only ever lived in company-issued rooms or crappy hotels or really expensive hotels, so I’m curious.”_

_Natasha pushes open the door all the way, inclining her head._

_“Get off your ass and come in, then.”_

_Clint smiles, getting up off the floor. He steps out of his boxers and accepts the invitation, joining Natasha under the spray and pulling the door closed._

_“Holy fuck,” he mutters as a wave of warm water hits his back in just the right way, soaking the skin surrounding a harsh bruise. “Jesus, this water pressure is probably worth more than my entire salary and I don’t even care.”_

_“Mmmm.” Natasha tilts her head back and pushes a clump of red hair down her neck. “Think of how good that’s gonna feel when we start to have really intense shower sex.”_

_“Every night after a mission?” Clint asks and Natasha smirks._

_“Who says we’re going to be sent on the same missions, wisass? Part of this deal is that we continue to work separately under this cover so that no one knows we’re really married.”_

_“Well, no one outside of the people in this nice block,” Clint says, gesturing towards the walls. Natasha rolls her eyes._

_“I promise I will try to be an acceptable, cookie-baking housewife and only use my good knives if company comes to kill us.”_

_“Now, there’s the domestic Natasha I was looking for,” Clint says, pushing her up against the wall. Natasha gasps quietly as Clint starts kissing her, sucking a dollop of water out of the curve of her neck._

_“Shower’s big enough for a threesome, technically,” Natasha points out as Clint continues to work his mouth over her body. He laughs, dragging his teeth against her wet skin._

_“You gonna start bringing guys home, Tasha?”_

_“Who said they had to be guys?” Natasha asks innocently, reaching down to run her fingers over his hardening cock. Clint groans and lets his head fall forward._

_“Nat --”_

_“Are you interrupting impending shower sex to ask another mundane question about our new life?” Natasha asks impatiently and Clint shakes his head, raising his eyes._

_“No,” he says slowly. “I’m asking if you ever think about it.”_

_“About what?” She fingers him a little more intensely, causing him to squirm. “The fountain in the backyard? The marble countertop in our kitchen?”_

_“I’m serious,” he says, wrenching away from her grasp. “I mean, Bogota, Lima, Paris...do you ever just stop and think of how we got here?”_

_Natasha tilts her head back and smiles, water dripping down her face like a rush of tears. She reaches out, bringing him in for another kiss._

_“All the damn time, Agent Barton.”_

 

 

Clint lets Natasha clean up most of the mess from the attack, which includes stealthily taking care of the bodies that have piled up along the stairs and in the foyer. Laura is surprisingly keen to help, though Clint thinks maybe despite her post-attack breakdown, the whole thing isn’t so surprising considering how Natasha had kissed her. Which was another matter entirely, and something he knows they probably need to address at some point, after he was done rewarding himself for being competent with a bottle of Tennesee Honey whiskey.

“I thought only Natasha liked the hard stuff,” Laura says with a smirk as she walks into the kitchen, joining Clint on the barstool. She takes the bottle from his grip and downs a long swig.

“Stay married to someone for a few years and they rub off on you,” Clint says, rubbing now-clean hands against his jeans. “Seriously, though -- you’re okay?”

He doesn’t know what he’s really asking, because earlier it would have been a question of if she was okay due to the attack. Now, part of him wants to know if she’s okay due to the fact that she willingly kissed both of them _and_ seemed to enjoy it. Laura smiles tentatively.

“I should be asking you that, Agent Barton. You’re the one who almost got killed tonight.”

“ _Almost_ ,” Natasha adds, joining them. Clint notices she’s changed into a loose tank top with no bra, and he also notices that his eyes aren’t the only ones that stray to her chest, focusing on the way her nipples are hardening underneath her pale blue shirt. “Kind of shitty, really. Now we have to figure out a whole new security system.”

“That’s the least of our problems,” Clint says with a sigh. “I mean, the last time this happened, things were so fucking easy. We just went on the run and basically started new lives.”

“So what’s the issue?”

“Huh?” Clint drops his gaze, turning to Laura at the same time Natasha does.

“I mean, why can’t you do that now?”

Clint stares at Laura for a long time and then laughs shortly, glancing at Natasha.

“I don’t understand.”

“Seriously?” Laura looks both annoyed and surprised. “I mean, your mission was botched, anyway. So you came home to figure things out. Who knows if your company is weirdly corrupt or people really _are_ looking for you or whatever...but, I mean, I wouldn’t want to get tangled up in that.”

“Laura.” Natasha gives her a small smile. “You’re thinking like a spy, but it’s not that easy.”

“But what if it is?” Laura asks, waving her hand around. She reaches for the bottle again. “I just don’t get what the harm is in starting things over again. I mean, you’re spies, right? And this house is nice, but it’s just a cover. You can probably go wherever you want. See the world. Well, you’ve probably seen a lot of it already, but maybe there’s a part you haven’t seen, yet.”

Clint remains silent while Laura talks, not wanting to admit that she’s strikingly right and also that he actually agrees. He thinks he’d laugh if he let himself think about how the answer to everything in his life seemed to be running away, except that it _worked_ for him, and for them.

Clint looks at his wife and locks into her eyes, his heart pounding against his ribcage at the memory of bullet wounds and safehouses and villas and rings and a bridge in Paris and a hotel room in Lima and bloody bandages and stale, heavy alcohol.

“Hey, Laura.”

Laura looks up from where she’s been staring at her lap, and Clint notices Natasha’s eyes are shining in a way she hasn’t seen since he asked her to marry him in the middle of a hotel room in Lima so long ago.

“How do you feel about Bogota?”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com) for fic and more.


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